212 Notes and Comments.- 



SCRATCHES ON FLINTS. 



Under the above heading, we have one of the extraordinary 

 effusions by Mr. J. Reid Moir, who repeatedly refers to himself 

 throughout as ' the author.' ' The author ' has already had 

 a similar article in Man.* As any school-boy knows, a freshly 

 broken flint has a very hard face : a flint which has been 

 ' weathered ' in the soil for a considerable time acquires a 

 soft white surface, which becomes softer and whiter the longer 

 it is weathered; and naturally, ploughs, etc., passing and re- 

 passing over these flints scratch them, the scratches being deeper 

 on the soft ' patina ' than on a fresh flint surface. 



CAUSE AND EFFECT. 



But Mr. Moir holds an ' inquiry ' ; an ' investigation ' ; 

 an ' examination ' : he conducts ' experiments,' and voild, 

 ' these experiments demonstrated clearly that newly broken, 

 sound, unpatinated flint is very hard ; that other patinated 

 examples are in a much softer condition.' Also, ' the author ' 

 has found that ' it is possible to scratch patinated flints with 

 a steel point, and that these scratches vary in depth and 

 appearance according to the amount of patination .... The 

 susceptibility of patinated flint to striation by the pressure of 

 a steel point may perhaps explain the large number of scratched 

 flints found upon the surface of the ground in certain localities.' 

 Marvellous ! and if ' the author ' were to carry out his enquiry, 

 his examination, his investigation, his experiment further, he 

 would find that flints, when washed about on the beach, become 

 quite rounded and lose all their scratches. And he would no 

 doubt be able to conclude that this was accomplished by the 

 action of the waves. ' Popular Science ' is indeed wonderful. 



THE COLLECTOR. 



Mr. Bruce Cummings writes on ' The Art of Perpetuation,' 

 in which he says, ' the joy of possession, the greed, the vanity 

 and self-aggrandisement of the collector proper, are deftly 

 subverted to the use of the explorer and conservator of know- 

 ledge, who, having a weak proprietorial sense — bloodless, 

 anaemic, it must seem to the enthusiastic connoisseur — is 

 satisfied so long as somewhere, by someone, Things are securely 

 saved. The purpose of the arch-conservator — his whole design 

 and the rationale of his art — is to redeem, embalm, dry, cure, 

 salt, pickle, pot every animal, vegetable, and mineral, every 

 stage in the history of the universe from nebular gas or 

 planetismals down to the latest and most insignificant event 

 reported in the newspapers. He would like to treat the globe 

 as the experimental embryologist treats an egg — to preserve 

 it whole in every hour of its development, then section it with 

 a microtome. 



* Vol. XIV., No. ii, 1914. 



Natural'st, 



