48 

 PROCEEDINGS 



OF 



THE GEOLOGICAL SOCIETY. 



POSTPONED PAPERS. 



On Elint El axes /rom Cakeickfergus and Larne. 

 By G. V. Dtj Noyer, Esq., of the Geological Survey of Ireland. 



(Communicated by Sir E. I. Murchison, Bart., Z.C.B., F.G.S.) 

 [Eead June 17, 1868*.] 

 [Abridged.] 



On the 3rd of March last I had the honour to address a letter to the 

 Director-General of the Geological Surveys of Great Britain, Sir 

 Roderick Murchison, Bart., K.C.B., on the subject of worked flint 

 flakes from the " drift " of the Belfast district, of which the follow- 

 ing is an extract : — 



These worked flint flakes, of which I send a typical collection to 

 the Museum in Jermyn Street, were picked up by me, during the 

 progress of my geological work last summer, from the gravelly drift 

 and subsoil clay of the districts around Carrickfergus, Larne, and 

 Belfast, in the co. Antrim, and Holywood and Bangor, in the co. 

 Down. 



I enclose a list and descriptive catalogue of these flint flakes, which 

 I believe are capable of being subdivided into eleven groups, placing 

 the rudest form of flake in the first. 



When these singular implements were discovered, some four or 

 five years ago, in the co. Antrim, along the chalk escarpment, their 

 mechanical origin was questioned ; indeed, I thought at first that 

 their primary origin might possibly be due to the natural crushing 

 of the flint nodules, which occur as a conglomerate enclosed in a 

 red or haematitic paste, resting on the subaerially eroded surface of 

 the chalk, and therefore directly interposed between it and the 

 basalt, — granting at the same time that the chippings round the 

 edges of the flakes were artificial. 



Subsequent examination into the subject, however, clearly showed 

 me that every flake, no matter how rude its form, provided it exhi- 

 bited that conchoidal fracture called the hulh of concussion at any of 

 its edges, is certainly artificial ; indeed I have succeeded in making 

 flakes, of the primary form myself, showing this peculiar conchoidal 

 fracture. 



* For the other communications read at this Evening Meeting, see Quart. 

 Journ. Q-eol. Soc. vol. xxiv. p. 484. 



