426 KALM'S ENGLAND. 



Sometimes in the larger fissures it is seen that thin 

 and flat bits of flint, like thin pieces of Schist [T. II. p. 74], 

 had filled up the fissure. Can it have been formed there, 

 after the chalk had been so cracked to pieces ? Thus, it 

 is evident, that chalk rocks have their fashion or quality 

 of cracking to pieces, just as ' granites,' grabargen, 

 with us. 



When the chalk has lain its time in the open air, 

 under sun and rain, there are often very small holes, on 

 the upper surface, so that it becomes as it were cellular. 

 The depth of the holes is, however, seldom over 1 or 2 

 geom. lin.=-iV or £ inch. 



The flints which were found in the chalk had no 

 certain shape, but were nearly all formless pieces, just as 

 when one smelts metals or some ore, and lets it run on 

 the ground in any chance form. The largest pieces of 

 flint are about 2 feet long, though one seldom sees such 

 large ones. Most are about 9 to 12 inches. Nearly all 

 flints, here in the chalk pits, are black ; though some 

 lightish pieces occur here and there. 



On the banks of the river Thames there lie in some 

 places plenty of flints, but although the strand for six hours 

 stands under water, and for the next six in the open air, 

 still they have not suffered any other change on that 

 account, than that some are externally of a white colour, 

 or also sometimes slightly inclining to blue, such as flints 

 are wont to be when they lie on the hills in the open air, 

 and the sun shines on them and bleaches them. Other- 

 wise most of the flints here were as clean and black, when 

 they were broken, as those which are newly taken out of 

 the solid chalk. [T. II. p. 75]. The flints sometimes 

 had on their surface, as it were, a rust-eaten or ochre- 

 coloured crust, and in such flints rust-eaten places often 

 occurred. The figures were such as before described, as 

 those assumed by an ore, smelted and run on the earth 



