essentially the same, and the work he was on was simply a continuation of that commenced in the unfortunate vessel. Nevertheless, on her arrival at Port Louis the “Cumberland” was seized by order of the governor-general de Caen. Flinders’s papers were taken possession of, and he found himself virtually a prisoner. We need not dwell on the sad details of this unjustifiable captivity, which lasted to June 1810. But there can be no doubt that the hardships and inactivity Flinders was compelled to endure for upwards of six years told seriously on his health, and brought his life to a premature end. He reached England in October 1810, after an absence of upwards of nine years. The official red-tapeism of the day barred all promotion to the unfortunate explorer, who set himself to prepare an account of his explorations, though unfortunately an important part of his record had been retained by de Caen. The results of his labours were published in two large quarto volumes, entitled A Voyage to Terra Australis, with a folio volume of maps. The very day (July 19, 1814) on which his work was published Flinders died, at the early age of forty. The great work is a model of its kind, containing as it does not only a narrative of his own and of previous voyages, but masterly statements of the scientific results, especially with regard to magnetism, meteorology, hydrography and navigation. Flinders paid great attention to the errors of the compass, especially to those caused by the presence of iron in ships. He is understood to have been the first to discover the source of such errors (which had scarcely been noticed before), and after investigating the laws of the variations, he suggested counter-attractions, an invention for which Professor Barlow got much credit many years afterwards. Numerous experiments on ships’ magnetism were conducted at Portsmouth by Flinders, by order of the admiralty, in 1812. Besides the Voyage, Flinders wrote Observations on the Coast of Van Diemen’s Land, Bass’s Strait, &c., and two papers in the Phil. Trans.—one on the “Magnetic Needle” (1805), and the other, “Observations on the Marine Barometer” (1806). (J. S. K.)
FLINSBERG, a village and watering-place of Germany, in the Prussian province of Silesia, on the Queis, at the foot of the Iserkamm, 1450 ft. above the sea, 5 m. W. of Friedeberg, the terminus station of the railway from Greiffenberg. Pop. (1900) 1957. It contains an Evangelical and a Roman Catholic church, and has some manufactures of wooden wares. Flinsberg is celebrated for its chalybeate waters, specific in cases of feminine disorders, and used both for bathing and drinking. It is also a climatic health resort of some reputation, and the visitors number about 8500 annually.
See Adam, Bad Flinsberg als klimatischer Kurort (Görlitz, 1891).
FLINT, AUSTIN (1812–1886), American physician, was born at Petersham, Massachusetts, on the 20th of October 1812, and graduated at the medical department of Harvard University in 1833. From 1847 to 1852 he was professor of the theory and practice of medicine in Buffalo Medical College, of which he was one of the founders, and from 1852 to 1856 he filled the same chair in the university of Louisville. From 1861 to 1886 he was professor of the principles and practice of medicine and clinical medicine in Bellevue Hospital Medical College, New York. He wrote many text-books on medical subjects, among these being Diseases of the Heart (1859–1870); Principles and Practice of Medicine (1866); Clinical Medicine (1879); and Physical Exploration of the Lungs by means of Auscultation and Percussion (1882). He died in New York on the 13th of March 1886.
His son, Austin Flint, junr., who was born at Northampton, Massachusetts, on the 28th of March 1836, after studying at Harvard and at the university of Louisville, graduated at the Jefferson Medical College, Philadelphia, in 1857. He then became professor of physiology at the university of Buffalo (1858) and subsequently at other centres, his last connexion being with the Cornell University Medical College (1898–1906). He was better known as a teacher and writer on physiology than as a practitioner, and his Text-book of Human Physiology (1876) was for many years a standard book in American medical colleges. He also published an extensive Physiology of Man (5 vols., 1866–1874), Chemical Examination of the Urine in Disease (1870), Effects of Severe and Protracted Muscular Exercise (1871), Source of Muscular Power (1878), and Handbook of Physiology (1905). In 1896 he became a consulting physician to the New York State Hospital for the Insane.
FLINT, ROBERT (1838–), Scottish divine and philosopher, was born near Dumfries and educated at the university of Glasgow. After a few years of pastoral service, first in Aberdeen and then at Kilconquhar, Fife, he was appointed professor of moral philosophy and political economy at St Andrews in 1864. From 1876 to 1903 he was professor of divinity at Edinburgh. He contributed a number of articles to the 9th edition of the Encyclopaedia Britannica. His chief works are Christ’s Kingdom upon Earth (Sermons, 1865); Philosophy of History in Europe (1874; partly rewritten with reference to France and Switzerland, 1894); Theism and Anti-theistic Theories (2 vols., being the Baird Lectures for 1876–1877; often reprinted); Socialism (1894); Sermons and Addresses (1899); Agnosticism (1903).
FLINT, TIMOTHY (1780–1840), American clergyman and writer, was born in Reading, Massachusetts, on the 11th of July 1780. He graduated at Harvard in 1800, and in 1802 settled as a Congregational minister in Lunenburg, Mass., where he pursued scientific studies with interest; and his labours in his chemical laboratory seemed so strange to the people of that retired region, that some persons supposed and asserted that he was engaged in counterfeiting. This, together with political differences, led to disagreeable complications, which resulted in his resigning his charge (1814) and becoming a missionary (1815) in the valley of the Mississippi. He was also for a short period a teacher and a farmer. His observations on the manners and character of the settlers of the Ohio and Mississippi valleys were recorded in a picturesque work called Recollections of the Last Ten Years passed in the Valley of the Mississippi (1826; reprinted in England and translated into French), the first account of the western states which brought to light the real life and character of the people. The success which this work met with, together with the failing health of the writer, led him to relinquish his more active labours for literary pursuits, and, besides editing the Western Review in Cincinnati from 1825 to 1828 and Knickerbocker’s Magazine (New York) in 1833, he published a number of books, including Francis Berrian, or the Mexican Patriot (1826), his best novel; A Condensed Geography and History of the Western States, or the Mississippi Valley (2 vols., 1828); Arthur Clenning (1828), a novel; and Indian Wars in the West (1833). His style is vivid, plain and forcible, and his matter interesting; and his works on the western states are of great value. He died in Salem, Mass., on the 16th of August 1840.
FLINT, a city and the county-seat of Genesee county, Michigan, U.S.A., on Flint river, 68 m. (by rail) N.W. of Detroit. Pop. (1890) 9803; (1900) 13,103, of whom 2165 were foreign-born; (1910, census) 38,550. It is served by the Grand Trunk and the Père Marquette railways, and by an electric line, the Detroit United railway, connecting with Detroit. The city has a fine court-house (1904), a federal building (1908), a city hall (1908) and a public library. The Michigan school for the deaf, established in 1854, and the Oak Grove hospital (private) for the treatment of mental and nervous diseases, are here. Flint has important manufacturing interests, its chief manufactures being automobiles, wagons, carriages—Flint is called “the vehicle city,”—flour, woollen goods, iron goods, cigars, beer, and bricks and tiles; and its grain trade is of considerable importance. In 1904 the total value of the city’s factory product was $6,177,170, an increase of 31.1% over that of 1900. The settlement of the place, then called the Grand Traverse of the Flint, began in 1820, but Flint’s growth was very slow until 1831, when it was platted as a village; it was chartered as a city in 1855.
FLINT, or Flintshire (sîr Gallestr), a county of North Wales, the smallest in the country, bounded N. by the Irish Sea and the Dee estuary, N.E. by the Dee, E. by Cheshire, and S.W. by Denbighshire. Area, 257 sq. m. Included in Flint is the detached hundred of Maelor, lying 8 m. S.E. of the main part of the county,
