144 Correspondence— F. J. Bennett, F.G.S. 



I found tbat tlie macliinery used was much the same as that in the 

 brickeaith wash-mills referred to in my article of February, 1906, 

 but I learnt this most important piece of information, not hitherto 

 mentioned by anyone as far as I have been able to discover, viz., 

 that durino; the 2 days, or 29 hours, that the mill is at work, 

 fresh charges of chalk are introduced ; this is of the utmost importance, 

 as it afiects materially the results obtained. I had only a very short 

 time for my visit, but I think I got all the available information. 

 The men told me that, as at Mantes, they removed all the visible 

 flints, so that the remaining- ones, which they do not want, are those 

 concealed in the chalk. The harrows also, as in the Mantes mills, 

 do not come within some inches of the bottom of the basin, and the 

 speed would appear to be the same at Borstall as at Mantes. 



From the flint refuse heap, "the heap of Eoliths" as M. Boule 

 styles them, I got a very good selection, some of which, as the men 

 were able to tell me, had been in for the full time, and some of which 

 had been in for only part of the time. 



Now from those that had been in for only paj-< of the time I got 

 some flints that, if photographed, would give very fair samples of 

 Eoliths, though not comparable otherwise in true work, some 

 showing bulbs of percussion and the fractures so polished that they 

 have quite an old look. My own attempts at forgeries are useful, 

 as they show me that I can produce in a short time this old polish, 

 ■where the flint allows of this. So that I was quite prepared for the 

 apparent old polish on newly fractured flints from the chalk. Some 

 of these had still on them some of the white crust of flints fresh from 

 the chalk. 



But those flints that had been in the full time loere quite different 

 from, and not Eoliths at all. These must have sunk to the bottom, 

 quite out of reach of the harrows, the "quasi-human element" 

 referred to in my article of February, and thus were the results 

 ultimately of loater-action only, highly charged of course with 

 chalk mud. These come out as almost perfectly smooth spheres, and 

 quite unlike any naturally water-worn pebbles, and what one would 

 naturally expect to be the outcome of flints, rotated at an uniform 

 speed in a circular basin, and under conditions that do not occur 

 in nature, save perhaps in a ' giant-cauldron.' 



Those flints that go in last, especially if the space beyond the reach 

 of the harrows be fully occupied, must be more or less, during that 

 time, in contact with the harrows, and these are the pseudo-Eoliths. 



So that we have this point, I think, clearly shown, and for the first 

 time in this machine-made implement controversy, that the pseudo- 

 Eoliths are the result of the pseudo-human element represented by 

 the harrows, and that the pseudo-torrent action, apart from the 

 harrows, only produces spheres. I made a selection of these from the 

 battered, buffeted, rough, and imperfect, to the smooth and almost 

 perfect sphere. F, J. Bennett. 



"West Malling. 



February Uth, 1906. 



