408 



THE GEOLOGIST. 



Besides the concurrent testimony of tlie workmen and of capable geologists, 

 the flint implements bear evidence in themselves of their geological age. "It 

 is a peculiarity of chalk flints to become deeply and permanently stained and 

 changed in colour, or to remain unchanged, according to the nature of the 

 deposit in which they are embedded. In clay beds the outside of flints 

 become opaquely white or porceUanic ; in sand their black fractured surfaces 

 remain almost unchanged, whilst in beds of ochreous and ferruginous sands 

 the flints are staiaed of light yellow, tawny, or deep brown colours, as is well 

 exhibited in the ordinary gravels of the London area. This change is the 

 work of very long time and of moisture before the opening of the beds. Now 

 in looking over the large series of flint-implements in M. de Perthes' collec- 

 tion, it caimot fail to strike the most casual observer that those from Menche- 

 court are almost always white and bright, whilst those from Moulia Quignon 

 have a dull yellow and brown surface ; and it may be noticed that whenever 

 (as is often the case) any of the matrix adheres to the flint, it is invariably of 

 the same natui'c, texture, and colour as that of the respective beds themselves. 

 In the same way at St. Acheul, where there are beds of white and others of 

 ochreous gravel, the flint implements exhibit corresponding variations in colour 

 and adhering matrix, added to which, as the white gravel contains chalk debris, 

 there are portions of the gravel in which the flints are more or less coated 

 with a film of deposited carbonate of lime ; and so it is with the fiuit imple- 

 ments which occur in these portions of the gravel. Purther, the surface of 

 many specimens is covered with dentritic markings. Some few implements 

 also show, like the fractured flmts, traces of wear, their sharp edges being 

 blunted. In fact, the flint-implements form just as much a continuous part of 

 the gravel itself, exhibiting the action of the same late influences, and in the 

 same force and degree, as the rough mass of flint fragments with which they 

 are associated." 



PROOEEDINaS OF GEOLOaiCAL SOCIETIES. 



Geological Society of London, March 28, 1860. 



1. " Notes about Spitzbergen in 1859." By James Lament, Esq., E.G.S. 



M. Lament first visited Edge's Land, which is composed of horizontal strata 

 of limestone, shale, and sandstone, with some coal. One of the glaciers on 

 this coast has a frontage of thirty miles. Black Point yielded some Carboni- 

 ferous fossils. The Thousand Isles are composed of greenstone, sometimes 

 columnar. Stour Eiord and Walter Thymen's Straits were next visited. The 

 sliores consist of the same kind of horizontal strata, witli trap-rocks. BeU 

 Sound and Ice Sound, on the west coast, were also examined ; the former has 

 high hills of grey fossiliferous limestone all round it ; the fossils, as deter- 

 mined by Mr. Salter, prove to be all carboniferous. At various points on the 

 coast and islands of southern Spitzbergen Mr. Lament found bones of whales 

 and Avalrus at elevations of ten to one hundred feet above the sea, and at dis- 

 tances of from a few yards to half a mile inland. The bones are sometimes 

 cnibedded in banks of moss. Drift-wood (pine) also abounds ; some of it lies 

 thirty feet above high--u-ater-mark. 



ill the supplement to this paper, Mr. Horner supplied a description of the 

 rocl.jspeciiucns brought from northern Spitzbergen by Parry and Poster ia 

 1S27. Erom the evidence tlms afforded it appears that the islands and mam- 

 land about the entrance of Waigatz Straits consist of granitic and gncissic 



