Vol. 60.] EOCENE OTJTLIER OFF THE COKNISH COAST. 11!) 



these in old descriptions of Eocene sections were termed (wrongly) 

 ' Chalk-pebbles.' It would be remembered that in the Chalk itself 

 there were decomposed or ' thick-skinned ' flints. He took it that 

 the Author regarded the Eocene of Cornwall as consisting largely of 

 river-gravels. In such deposits we must expect variety rather than 

 a monotonous uniformity. 



The Author, in reply to Mr. Monckton, thought that the 

 characteristic internal alteration noticed in flints from Eocene 

 deposits was not confined to the Hampshire Basin, but was equally 

 common in the neighbourhood of London, at Highgate, Hampstead, 

 and Staumore. It could not be described properly as 'weathering,' 

 for it was apparently a change that took place while the flints were 

 embedded in the sandy or clayey matrix. 



In reply to Mr. Kendall, he thought that the perfect rounding of 

 the Cretaceous material in the beach of Gunwalloe was due to the 

 drifting of the flints, for 15 or 20 miles across the bay from near 

 Marazion, where the flints were both subangular and larger. 



Mr. Woodward's suggestion that these angular flints might have 

 been brought by drift-ice would not explain their occurrence in 

 large quantities at one spot, while bays on either side only yielded 

 the flints sporadically. These sporadic stones, in all probability, 

 pointed to the agency of drift-ice in Mount's Bay in Pleistocene 

 times, as did the striated erratic from Scilly exhibited by 

 Mr. Barrow. 



