634 



SCIENTIFIC NEWS. 



[Dec. 21, 1888. 



FLINTS* 



PROFESSOR JUDD, in asking those present to 

 study with him the subject of flints, said it had 

 been his special aim to illustrate the methods in which 

 a scientific inquiry should be conducted. The object of 

 science was to study the phenomena of nature with a 

 \iew to discovering the causes by which these phenomena 

 were produced. Now, the legitimate method of doing 

 this, as he had pointed out to them already, was, first, to 

 collect as many facts as possible bearing upon the sub- 

 ject, and secondly, to arrange these facts so as to illus- 

 trate the subject under consideration ; thirdly, to frame a 

 theory, it might be a tentative theory, that should har- 

 monise with all these facts ; and fourthly, to try the 

 theory, when it had been framed, by the whole of the 

 facts that could be discovered, and if it was verified, to 

 accept it ; but if the theory were not verified, to reject it. 

 Now, many people seemed to think that this was a very 

 cumbrous and round-about way of proceeding, and that 

 there was a short and easier method by which the desired 

 results might be obtained. The method might be 

 shorter, but he thought a little consideration would show 

 them that it was neither sounder nor so satisfactory as 

 the scientific method. The method which these people 

 would employ was, " First make your theory, then look 

 out for facts which seem to support the theory, and most 

 carefully shut your eyes to all such facts as do not fit 

 the theory." Now that might be characterised as the 

 unscientific method. 



He did not know how it was — perhaps it was 

 due to the fantastic forms and curious appearances 

 which these flints often presented — but from some 

 cause or another flints seemed to exercise a won- 

 derful fascination for a speculative mind, and they would 

 not be surprised, therefore, that the attempts to settle the 

 question of the origin of flints by a short and easy 

 method were by no means few in number. For example, 

 there was a very worthy and gallant colonel who used to 

 reside on the Wiltshire Downs, and as the hills around 

 were covered with chalk-flints, he thought he ought to 

 know all about these chalk-flints, and that he must tell 

 the world all about them, especially the way they were 

 formed, and he wrote a book called the " Old Chalk 

 Cemetery," in which he clearly proved, to his own 

 satisfaction, that the flints had been brought by the 

 general deluge, and mixed up in the chalk, and that it 

 was obvious these flints were remains of once living 

 things, the forms of which he could easily re- 

 cognise. More than this, he gave a great deal of trouble 

 — unnecessary trouble he (the lecturer) was afraid — to 

 the curators of museums, for he was continually getting 

 friends to put questions in Parliament why museums 

 were filled with the class of objects they contained, 

 whereas there were more interesting objects with which 

 he undertook to fill not only those museums, but as many 

 museums as the nation liked to build. He never gained 

 his object in getting flints into museums, but what the 

 museums would have been like they might judge from 

 the book, which contained a number of remarkable 

 photographs. Turning over the pages of that book, he 

 found the echinus eating into the back of the bird of 

 paradise. Now, considering the habits of the bird of 

 paradise and of the echinus, it must have been only 

 during the general deluge that they could have been 

 brought together. Of course, he had the unicorn and the 



* Fifth Lecture to Working Men at the Royal School of Mines. 



sea-serpent — that goes without saying ; and as for noses, 

 and arms of men, women, and children, he had sufficient 

 to stock any number of museums. To take another 

 example, there was an equally worthy old clergyman, 

 who had written a book, which bore the title of " The 

 Chalk and Flint Formation; its Origin in Harmony with 

 the Ancient and Scientific Modern Theory of the World." 

 At a.ll events, they would have no difficulty in guessing 

 that the " scientific modern theory " was no other than 

 the author's own. His work was illustrated by photo- 

 graphs of big flints. Then he went on to insist that all 

 chalk flints were nothing but meteorites that had tumbled 

 down in the chalk mud, and somehow or another had got 

 laid into bands. He (the lecturer) must not follow these 

 amusing flights of imaginations ; there was no end to them. 

 As Lyell used to say, "When the human imagina- 

 tion is untrammelled by those awkward things, facts, it 

 revels with all the freedom characteristic of motion in 

 vacuo." 



Now, let them come down from those wonderful 

 flights, and, curbing their imagination, look at the facts 

 which could be obtained by the use of experiments and 

 observations, and see what they could find out concern- 

 ing the origin of flints. If they were puzzled at any 

 point they would confess it; but they would try, never- 

 theless, to find out what were the theories which the 

 study of flints would lead them to form. He thought he 

 could best do that by inviting them to consider, first, what 

 were the sources of the silica, which, as they had now 

 learned, formed flints ; secondly, what was the way in 

 which that silica was separated to make flints ; thirdly, 

 let them ask what was the way in which the silica ot 

 flints reached its present position, so that it occurred in 

 nodules and bands in the chalk ; and fourthly, what were 

 the changes which it subsequently underwent so as to 

 present the forms that they had seen it did at the pre- 

 sent time. First of all let them ask what were the 

 sources of the silica which formed flints. Now they would 

 remember an experiment he tried in the earliest 

 lecture in which he took a substance which was 

 a compound of silica and one of the alkalies, potash or 

 soda, formed by melting those two substances together 

 — it would dissolve in water. They would recollect that 

 to that solution of this compound of silica and one of the 

 alkalies he added a little acid, and the result was that 

 the compound was decomposed, the alkali and the acid 

 remaining dissolved in the water, and the silica remain- 

 ing also dissolved in the water ; and he showed them 

 how, by a method of dialysis, could be separated from 

 the acid all the alkali left in the water. Now, that was 

 the operation which was continually going on in the 

 earth around us. Everywhere that experiment was 

 being continued on a small scale. All those rocks which 

 were formed by the action of fire, which were called 

 igneous rocks — all those rocks contained silicates of the 

 alkalies. It wasa compoundof potash orsodaand silica, and 

 wherever water was percolating through rocks they found 

 small quantities of this substance — silica combined with 

 one of the alkalies — passing into solution ; and if the 

 water contained an acid, however weak it might be, then 

 this decomposition of the silicate was going on, and silica 

 was passing into a state of solution. It was true that 

 this action went on very slowly indeed, like many of 

 the processes in nature, and that it would take many 

 years in a large mass of rock to produce as much silica 

 in a dissolved state as he produced in the course of a 

 few seconds by the experiments he performed. But 



