FLINT-FLINT IMPLEMENTS AND WEAPONS.

dismantled in 1647. The double tower or keep is 40 feet in diameter, and includes two concentric walls, each 6 feet thick, with an intervening gallery 8 feet broad; within, is a circle 20 feet in diameter, with four entrances. Deterioration of the channel of the Dee has made F. in a great degree a port of Chester, and here larger vessels, especially with timber, are discharged, and the cargoes floated up the Dee in smaller vessels, the timber in rafts. (1871-pop. 4277.) FLINT, a river of Georgia, one of the United States of America, unites on its right with the Chattahoochee, at the south-west angle of the state, to form the Appalachicola, which, after a course of 100 miles, enters the Gulf of Mexico. The F. itself is about 300 miles long, being practicable for steam-boats up to Albany, about 250 miles distant from the sea.

or labour expended in their manufacture. In some instances, the flint has been roughly fashioned into something like the required form by two or three blows; in others, it has been laboriously chipped into the wished-for shape, which is often one of no little elegance. In yet another class of cases, the flint, after being duly shaped, has been ground smooth, or has even received as high a polish as could be given by a modern lapidary. Examples of all the varieties of flint weapons and implements will be found in the British Museum, in the Museum of the Royal Irish Academy at Dublin, in the Museum of the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland at Edinburgh, and above all, in the Museum of the Royal Society of Antiquaries at Copenhagen, which is especially rich in this class of remains. Representations of interesting or characteristic types may be seen in the Catalogue of the Archaeological Museum at Edinburgh in 1856 (Edin. 1859); in Mr Wilde's Catalogue of the Antiquities in the Museum of the Royal Irish Academy (Dubl. 1857-1861); in Worsaae's Nordiske Oldsager i det Kongelige Museum i Kjobenhavn (Copen. 1859); and in M. Frederic Troyon's Habitations Lacustres (Lausanne, 1860).

FLINT, TIMOTHY, REV., an American clergyman and author, was born, in 1780, at Reading, Massachusetts, and graduated at Harvard College. In 1802 he became minister of the Congregational Church in Lunenburg, county of Worcester in that state, where he remained till 1814. In the following year, he became a missionary for the valley of the Mississippi, where he was engaged in itinerant preachGeological discoveries have recently invested flint ing and teaching a school. In 1825, he returned implements with a new interest. At Abbeville, at to the northern states; and in 1826, published his Amiens, at Paris, and elsewhere on the continent, Recollections of Ten Years passed in the Valley of the flint weapons, fashioned by the hand of man, have Mississippi (Boston, Svo). The same year appeared been found along with remains of extinct species from his pen a novel, entitled Francis Berrian, or of the elephant, the rhinoceros, and other mamthe Mexican Patriot, purporting to be the autobio-mals, in undisturbed beds of those deposits of sand, graphy of a New England adventurer who acted a gravel, and clay to which geologists have given' conspicuous part in the first Mexican revolution, the name of the drift.' They so far resemble the and in the overthrow of Iturbide. In 1828, he flint implements and weapons found on the surface issued two works: A Condensed Geography and of the earth, but are generally of a larger size, History of the Western States in the Mississippi of ruder workmanship, and less varied in shape. Valley (Cincinnati, 2 vols. 8vo); and Arthur Clen- They have been divided into three classes-roundning, a novel (Philadelphia, 2 vols. 8vo). Another pointed, as in fig. 1; and sharp-pointed, as in fig. 2, novel, George Mason, or The Backwoodsman, and a both being chipped to a sharp edge, so as to cut or romance in 2 vols., The Shoshonee Valley, appeared at pierce only at the pointed end; and oval-shaped, as Cincinnati in 1830. In 1833, he edited several in fig. 3, with a cutting edge all round. The first numbers of the Knickerbocker Magazine, and was and second classes vary in length from about four subsequently editor for three years of The Western inches to eight or nine inches; the third class is Monthly Magazine. His other works are: Indian generally about four or five inches long, but examples Wars in the West (1833, 12mo); Lectures on Natural have been found of no more than two inches, and of History, Geology, Chemistry, and the Arts (Boston, as much as eight or nine inches. In no instance has 1833, 12mo); translation of Droy's L'Art d'étre any flint implement discovered in the drift been Heureuse, with additions by translator; and Bio- found either polished or ground. The French antigraphical Memoir of Daniel Boone, the first Settler quary, M. Boucher de Perthes, was the first to of Kentucky (Cincinnati, 1834, 18mo). In 1835, he call attention to these very interesting remains, contributed to the London Athenæum a series of in his Antiquités Celtiques et Antediluviennes (Paris, Sketches of the Literature of the United States. 1847-1857). But it has since been remembered He died at Salem, August 16, 1840.-His son, that implements of the same kind were found in a MICAH P. FLINT, published a volume of poetry, similar position at Hoxne, in Suffolk, along with entitled The Hunter and other Poems. remains of some gigantic animal, in 1797, and at Gray's Inn Lane, in London, along with remains of an elephant, in 1715. Both these English examples are still preserved the first in the Museum of the Society of Antiquaries at London, the second in the British Museum, and they are precisely similar in every respect to the examples more recently found in France.

FLINT GLASS. See GLASS.

FLINT IMPLEMENTS AND WEAPONS, believed to have been used by the primitive inhabitants, have from time to time, in more or less number, been turned up by the plough and the spade, dug out from ancient graves, fortifications, and dwellingplaces, or fished up from the beds of lakes and rivers, in almost every country of Europe. They do not differ, in any material respect, from the flint implements and weapons still in use among uncivilised tribes in Asia, África, America, and the islands of the Pacific Ocean. The weapons of most frequent occurrence are arrow-heads (see ELF-ARROWS), spear-points, dagger-blades, and axe-heads or Celts (9. v.). The more common implements are knives, chisels, rasps, wedges, and thin curved or semicircular plates, to which the name of 'scrapers' has been given. There is great variety, as well in the size as in the shape, even of articles of the same kind. There is equal variety in the amount of skill

To what age these remains should be assigned, is a question on which geology seems scarcely yet prepared to speak with authority. But, in the words of Mr John Evans, in his essay on Flint Implements in the Drift,' in the Archæologia, vol. xxxviii. (Lond. 1860), thus much appears to be established beyond a doubt, that in a period of antiquity remote beyond any of which we have hitherto found traces, this portion of the globe was peopled by man; and that mankind has here witnessed some of those geological changes by which the so-called diluvial beds were deposited. Whether these were the result of some violent rush

FLINTSHIRE-FLOATING BATTERY.

of waters, such as may have taken place when the course of our brooks, streams, and rivers, may "the fountains of the great deep were broken be matter of dispute. Under any circumstances, up, and the windows of heaven were opened," this great fact remains indisputable, that at Amiens, or whether of a more gradual action, similar in land which is now 160 feet above the sea, and 90 character to some of those now in operation along feet above the Somme, has, since the existence of

man, been submerged under fresh water, and an aqueous deposit from 20 to 30 feet in thickness, a portion of which, at all events, must have subsided from tranquil water, has been formed upon it; and this, too, has taken place in a country the level of which is now stationary, and the face of which has been little altered since the days when the Gauls and the Romans constructed their sepulchres in the soil overlying the drift which contains these relics

of a far earlier race of men.'

vales, and the staple produce is wheat, oats, barley, potatoes, cattle, cheese, and butter. Cotton is the main manufacture. The London, Chester, and Holyhead Railway skirts the east and north shores. F. contains 5 hundreds and 32 parishes. Pop. (1861) 69,870. About 215 places of worship (110 Methodists, 41 Episcopal). F. sends two members to parliament. The chief towns are Flint, formerly the county town; Mold, St Asaph, Holywell, Rhyddlan, and Hawarden. F. has traces of Roman lead-mines, is traversed by Wat and Offa's Dykes, and has some ancient castle and ecclesiastical ruins. In F., in the 7th c., Saxon invaders massacred 1200 Christian monks of the monastery of Bangor. In 796, the Saxons defeated the Welsh here with dreadful slaughter, which event gave rise to the still popular plaintive air of Morfa Rhyddlan. (1871-pop.76,245.)

FLINTSHIRE, a maritime county of North Wales, bounded on the E. by Cheshire and the river Dee, on the S. and W. by Denbighshire, and on the N. by the Irish Sea. The main portion of the county is 25 miles long by 10 broad, and the larger of the two outlying portions, which lies toward the south-east of the main part, is 10 miles by 5. F. is the smallest of the Welsh counties, its area being FLINTY SLATE, of which there are beds in only 184,905 acres, of which 4th is arable. The coast, 20 miles long, is low and sandy, but on the is an impure quartz, assuming a slaty structure. It some parts of Scotland, and in many other countries, Dee estuary fertile. A hill-range, parallel to the Dee, runs through the length of the county, and rises contains about 75 per cent. of silica, the remainder in Garreg to 825 feet. Another range along the south-being lime, magnesia, oxide of iron, &c. Its fracwest border of the county rises in Moel Famma, ture is rather splintery than shell-like. It is more 1845 feet. The chief rivers are the Dee, Alyn, and tions into clay-slate, with which it is often in most It passes by insensible gradaClwyd. The chief strata are Permian, Carboniferous, intimate geological connection. Lydian Stone (q. v.) and Devonian. Coal, and ores of iron, lead, silver, is a variety of flinty slate. copper, and zinc are the chief mineral products and exports. F. supplies a fourth of the lead produced in Britain. The soil is fertile in the plains and

or less translucent.

FLOATING BATTERY is a hulk, heavily armed, and made as invulnerable as possible, used

FLOATING BATTERY-FLOATING ISLANDS.

Straggling plots, which to and froe doe rome
In the wide waters;

in defending harbours, or in attacks on marine the icebergs of colder latitudes. Imagination has fortresses. The most remarkable instance of their always invested with a peculiar interest the employment was by the French and Spaniards against Gibraltar, in the memorable siege which lasted from July 1779 to February 1783, when ten of these vessels, carrying 212 large guns, were brought to bear on the fortress; they had sides of

Floating Battery used in the Russian War, 1851-1855.

great thickness, and were covered with sloping roofs, to cause the shot striking them to glance off innocuously. But their solidity and strength were unavailing against the courage and adroitness of the defenders, under the gallant General Elliot, who succeeded in destroying them with red-hot cannonballs. Steam floating batteries of iron were constructed for the war with Russia in 1854, both by the British and French governments; but, notwithstanding that they rendered good service before Kinburn, they have since been generally discarded for other than purely defensive purposes, as too cumbrous for navigation, and too suffocating from the smoke that collected between their decks during action. The iron-plated frigates now (1862) made (such as the Warrior) can scarcely be regarded as floating batteries, being rather frigates of splendid build, rendered almost impenetrable by sheets of iron overlying their sides.

and ancient legend did not fail to notice the floating islets of the sacred Vandimonian Lake, which were large enough to bear away cattle that were tempted upon them by their fresh green grass; and the island of the Cutulian waters, which carried on its surface a dark and gloomy grove, and was constantly changing its place. A small lake in Artois, near St Omer, is remarkable for the number of its floating islands, as are also the marshy lakes of Comacchio near the Gulf of Venice. Among the largest in the world are those of the Lake of Gerdau, in Prussia, which furnish pasturage for 100 head of cattle; and that of the Lake of Kolk, in Osnabruck, which is covered with beautiful elms. Loch Lomond was long celebrated for its floating island; it, however, can no longer boast of one, as it has long since subsided and become stationary. Floating islands are found in some lakes of Scotland, and also in Ireland, and consist for the most part of large floating masses of peat. Pennant gives a description of one which he saw in Breadalbane, the surface of which exhibited plenty of coarse grass, small willows, and even a little birch tree. More interesting to the scientific inquirer, as presenting a phenomenon not so easily explained, are those floating islands which from time to time appear and disappear in the same spot, of which there is one in the Lake of Derwentwater in Cumberland, one in the Lake Ralang in the province of Smalande in Sweden, and one in Ostrogothia. That in Derwentwater is opposite to the mouth of a the many theories which have been proposed to stream called the Catgill; and the most probable of account for it is that which ascribes it to the waters of the stream, when flooded by rains, getting beneath the interlaced and matted roots of the aquatic plants which there form a close turf on the bottom of the lake. This floating island, when it rises above the water, is most elevated in the centre, and on its being pierced with a fishing-rod, water has spouted up to the height of two feet.

The marshy ground of the vale of Cashmere, and particularly around the city of Cashmere, containing many lakes, and liable to inundations, exhibits a FLOATING GARDENS, employed chiefly for the cultipeculiar form of human industry in its numerous vation of cucumbers, melons, and water-melons. These floating gardens may be described as portions of the marshy ground artificially made to float, by cutting through the roots of the reeds, sedges, and other plants about two feet below the surface, upon which mud is then spread. The floating of the garden secures the soil and crop from destruction by inundations.

FLOATING ISLANDS exist in some lakes, and more rarely in slow and placid rivers. Not unfrequently, they are formed by the detachment of portions of the bank; the interlaced roots of plants Floating gardens existed on the Lake of Mexico forming a fabric sufficiently strong to endure the before the conquest of Mexico by the Spaniards. occasional buffeting of waves, and to support soil The Mexicans had made great progress in the art for herbage or even trees to grow in. Floating of gardening, and particularly in the cultivation of islands are often formed by aggregation of drift flowers, which were much used both in their festiwood in the creeks and bays of tropical rivers, and vities and in their worship. How they were induced being wafted into the channel of the river when it to attempt the formation of floating gardens, and at is flooded or by the wind, are carried down to the what period it was first done, are mere matters of sea, with the soil that has accumulated, and the conjecture. The shallowness of great part of the vegetation that has established itself upon them. lake was favourable to the success of the attempt, They are sometimes seen at a distance of 50 or 100 and perhaps the gradual receding of its waters may miles from the mouth of the Ganges, with living be reckoned among the reasons of the gradual trees standing erect upon them. Portions of the diminution of the number of the floating gardens, alluvial soil from the deltas of rivers, held together which have almost ceased to be reckoned among by the roots of mangroves and other trees, are the wonders of the world. The Abbé Clavigero, in sometimes also carried out to sea after typhoons his History of Mexico, describes them as formed or hurricanes, and ships have, in consequence, of wicker-work, water-plants, and mud; as somebeen involved in unexpected dangers, as amongst times more than 20 poles in extent; the largest

FLOATSTONE-FLOOR-CLOTH.

ones commonly having a small tree in the centre, and sometimes a hut for the cultivator; and as employed for the cultivation both of flowers and culinary plants. Humboldt confirms this description, but states that the real floating gardens, or chinampas, are rapidly diminishing in number. The existing chinampas are in general not floating gardens, but plots of ground with very wide ditches between them, formed by heaping up earth from the ditches in the swamps or shallows at the side of the lake.

Great part of Bangkok, the capital of Siam, consists of floating houses. See BANGKOK.

FLOATSTONE, a variety of quartz, consisting of fibres-delicate crystals-aggregated so that the whole mass is sponge-like, and so light, owing to the air confined in the interstices, as to float for a while on water. It is found in a limestone of the chalk formation near Paris, in imbedded masses, or incrusting flint nodules.

FLOBE'CQ, a small town of Belgium, in the province of Hainault, 20 miles north-east of Tournai. It has extensive manufactures of linens, has breweries, salt-works, oil and flour mills, and has two fairs annually. Pop. 5258.

to have left the field. On the Scottish right, the clansmen under Lennox and Argyle, goaded to fury by the English archers, rushed forward, heedless of order, and fell with the greatest violence upon their opponents, who, however, received them with wonderful intrepidity and coolness, and at length put them to flight with great slaughter. Meantime, a desperate resistance was being made by the Scottish centre, where the king fought on foot among his nobles. Scottish history presents

no instance in which the national valour burned with a purer flame than in this. Hemmed in by outnumbering enemies, the king among his slender group of lords fought manfully until, when the night was closing on Flodden, he fell pierced by an arrow, and mortally wounded in the head. The hill was held during the night by the Scots; but at dawn, learning the state of matters, they abandoned their position. Their loss amounted to from 8000 to 10,000 men. 'Scarce a Scottish family of eminence,' says Scott, but had an ancestor killed at Flodden.' Besides the king, the Archbishop of St Andrews and twelve earls were among the slain. The English loss amounted to about 6000 or 7000; but Surrey's victory was so nearly a defeat that he was unable to prosecute the war with any vigour. The sixth canto of Sir Walter Scott's poem of Marmion contains a magnificent, and in the main an accurate, description of the battle.

6

A man must now be

FLO'DDEN, BATTLE OF. On the 24th January 1502, a perpetual peace' was concluded between England and Scotland. In the course of a few years, however, a series of petty quarrels had done FLOGGING, ARMY AND NAVY. Corporal much to bring this peaceable arrangement to a ter-punishment has existed from time immemorial in mination; and in 1513, on the invasion of France, the British army and navy; formerly having been Scotland's ancient ally, by Henry of England, a inflicted upon slight occasion, and often with bar war broke out between the two countries. James barous severity. In deference, however, to public IV., the chivalrous but rash king of Scotland, opinion, it has been much less resorted to during summoned the whole array of his kingdom to meet recent years, and promises almost to disappear on the Borough or Common Moor of Edinburgh, under a regulation of 1860. which extended from the southern walls of the city convicted of one disgraceful offence against discip to the foot of the Braid Hills, and which was then line before he can be liable to flogging for the next a field spacious, and delightful by the shade of such offence; and even after one such degradation, many stately and aged oaks.' Here an army, it is he may be restored to the non-liable class by a said, of 100,000 men assembled. With this force year's good conduct. The punishment of flogging, James crossed the border on the 22d August 1513; which is generally administered with a whip or cat but instead of advancing at once, and achieving of nine tails on the bare back, cannot, under existing a decisive success, he lingered in the neighbourhood of the Tweed until his army had become rules, exceed fifty lashes. reduced by desertion to about 30,000 men. On the 6th September, James took up his position on Flodden Hill, the last and lowest eminence of the Cheviots toward the north-east. On the morning of the 9th, the Earl of Surrey, lieutenant-general of the northern counties of England, at the head of an army of about 32,000 men, advanced from the south-east, crossed the Till by a skilful and unexpected movement, and thus cut off all communication between King James and Scotland. While the English were crossing the Till, the Scots might have attacked them with every chance of success, and their not taking advantage of this opportunity was the first great mistake of the battle. Observing that the English were aiming at a strong position to the north-west of Flodden Hill, and desirous of preventing this, James, having ordered his tents to be set on fire, advanced against them in battle-array. The two armies were drawn up in similar order, each consisting of a centre, a right and left wing, and a reserve placed behind the centre. At about four o'clock on Friday, 9th September, the battle commenced with cannonading on both sides. The Earls of Huntly and Home, who commanded the left wing of the Scottish army, charged the English right, which was led by Sir Edmund Howard, and entirely defeated it. Instead, however, of following up their success, Home's borderers commenced pillaging the baggage of both armies; and Huntly, after his first charge, is said

Corporal punishment is not recognised in the French army; but then the soldiers in that country and have, on an average, a higher moral tone than are drawn by conscription from all ranks of society, the British recruits, who, attracted by a bounty, volunteer usually from the lowest orders. On the other hand, the discipline in the French army, and especially during war on a foreign soil, is universally admitted to be inferior to the strict rule preserved among British troops. Soldiers and sailors being men unaccustomed to control their passions, and esprit of a force, unless summarily repressed, it is any breach of insubordination being fatal to the considered necessary to retain the power-however rarely exercised of inflicting the painful and humiliating punishment of flogging. The French soldier, though escaping the ignominy of personal articles of war as actually administered; and the chastisement, is governed by a code harsher than our service during peace, is not unfrequently visited in punishment of death, scarcely known in the British France upon offenders against discipline.

FLOOR-CLOTH, a coarse canvas coated on both sides, and partly saturated with thick oil-paint, one side having usually a coloured pattern printed upon it in oil-paint. The canvas basis for floorcloth is chiefly manufactured in Dundee. As it is required to be without seam, and of sufficient width to cover considerable spaces of flooring, special looms are required for weaving it. It is made

FLOOR-CLOTH-FLOORS.