Vol. 70.] PROCEEDINGS OF THE GEOLOGICAL SOCIETY. ill 



1^ inches in diameter at the base, and of character similar to 

 those produced artificially. From a Glacial gravel at Lenwade 

 specimens were shown of tabular flints with chipped edges, and 

 others which simulated closely the ' hollow scraper ' and ' one-edge ' 

 work usually attributed to the hand of Man. From gravel at 

 Tuddenham, full of split flints fresh from the Chalk, the edges of 

 the flints exhibited were chipped almost entirely from one side: 

 this chipping he attributed with confidence to natural agencies. 

 For some years he had been working at certain types of chipped 

 flints which some would consider artefacts, but concerning: which 

 he had grave doubts; and he had collected a large series from a pit 

 at Eaton, near Norwich. This pit from its basement-bed, which 

 is 1 foot thick, yielded a remarkable series of flints with chipped 

 secondary edges of various shapes. The basement-bed consisted of 

 three zones : the lowermost zone was made up of Chalk in process 

 of disintegration. The middle zone consisted entirely of much- 

 i'ractured Chalk-flints, many of which come away as a mass of 

 splinters and contain bulbous flakes : the splitting of these flints 

 was due to crushing in situ under great pressure, but the flakes 

 show little or no secondary chipping. The top zone yielded all the 

 chipped specimens that he exhibited, and he pointed out that they 

 -all came from one face of the pit ; that they were collected in a 

 horizontal distance of 12 feet ; and that they were picked out by 

 hand. The specimens are generally scratched all over, and many 

 show remarkable selective work on one edge. 



A like series was also exhibited from a similar basement-bed at 

 Harford Bridges. They also occur at East Kunton, and in many 

 other places where the basement-bed is exposed. The so-called 

 * implements ' generally occur where the basement-bed is most 

 crowded with flints. 



In 'the speaker's opinion, these chipped flints were simply the 

 result of crushing by natural forces which acted during the cutting 

 away of the Chalk, either by ice or snow before the gravels were 

 deposited, or by lateral movement in the gravels under great 

 vertical pressure. Whenever a moving stone impinged on the sharp 

 edge of a stationary flint, chips would be flaked off the flint along 

 the lines of least resistance ; but when the sharp edge of the flint 

 is turned away from the impinging force no chipping will ensue. 

 As regards the direct proof that these chipped flints were Nature's 

 work, it was next to impossible to reproduce the conditions under 

 which the natural chipping took place, and to make observations in 

 a gravel buried under hundreds of tons of soil, ice, and snow. The 

 speaker had, however, been able to exhibit naturally-chipped flints 

 which owed their character to the foundering of a mass of gravel 

 in a pipe, the gravel breaking through a layer of flints in the Chalk. 



Mr. S. H. Warrex, in exhibiting the results of certain ex- 

 periments upon flint, said that he wished to make it clear that 

 these experiments were not conducted from the point of view of 

 proving what Nature could do by the attempted simulation of 



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