The idler picking up pebbles on the sea-shore, and the geologist breaking stones in a gravel-pit, frequently meet with banded flints, which display their markings like a painting on the smoothly fractured internal surface, or, in other cases, in the form of lines more or less deeply engraved on the exterior by the action of the weather. The bands seen in section are often accompanied by discolorations of fanciful shape, in which imaginative people find pictures of their friends and others.