18 



But these smaller scattered specimens that we find in every field- 

 we cannot help asking how came they there, and when? In the 

 face of the cliffs reaching from Dover onward we may find an 

 answer to the latter question. There we see them in long, unend- 

 ing, parallel lines, one above the other at varying intervals, stretch- 

 ing away into the distance ; all who have lived in, or visited chalk 

 districts have learned to associate chalk and flint. Yet it would be 

 incorrect to assume that flint is limited to that rock ; it is found in 

 many others though far more sparingly. But undoubtedly all the 

 flints in Kent and the adjoining counties have once belonged to 

 beds of chalk. In the fields they greatly annoy the farmer ; in 

 spite of all his diligence in periodically clearing the ground of them, 

 they seem to be as numerous as ever, giving some apparent ground 

 for the belief prevalent in some parts of England that they grow 

 there and we cannot extirpate them. When we ask how they came 

 among the soil of our fields the geologist tells us they were left 

 behind when the chalk beds wasted away, for it is part of their 

 creed — and a credible part of it in all senses, that beds of chalk 

 once stretched all over the Weald of Kent, but that the rain, rivers, 

 and frost of long ages have washed it back to our present line of 

 hills. The flints, being of more unyielding material, remained 

 behind as permanent witnesses of the great change. 



And there are puzzling questions too about these long flint lines 

 in the cliff. By what strange natural laws and processes came they 

 there ? For we know that these lines are but the edges of vast 

 sheets of flints underlying the chalk and covering probably an area 

 of many square miles. Beds of sand, we can readily understand, 

 were deposited in the waters ; the white chalk consists we are told 

 of microscopic shells which gradually subsided to the bottom of the 

 ocean as the occupants died, and there accumulated age after age : 

 but flint in its multiplied forms, strange and often grotesque — how 

 came it to alternate with this spotless limestone, not being lime- 

 stone itself ? Is it also organic ? Or is it a sediment ? If the 

 latter how came it in such uncouth shapes ? 



And yet perhaps, when we come to examine it, not altogether so 

 uncouth ; we have some shapely forms before us, and a very little 

 consideration inclines us to the belief in an organic origin. 

 Undoubtedly some of those specimens on the table are petrified 

 sponges, shells, and other animal formations. 



Now, if we appeal to the chemist for aid in our study of flint, we 

 are told at once in learned language that it consists almost wholly 

 of "silica," which is a combination of oxygen with the element 

 silicon. This silica in a thousand forms enters very largely into 

 the composition of the earth's crust ; there are few rocks which do 

 not contain it. In combination with water it forms silicic acid 



