On Flexible Stones. S5&7 



tept In the cafe of ilandard authors, whofe works are fare 

 of an extenfive fale : but, unhappily for his mode of reason- 

 ing, exactly the converfe of this is the truth; for, if there 

 wouM be an advantage in applying the ftereotype art to books 

 of ra id (ale, there would be a itiil greater one in the cafe of 

 tboie publications whofe fale may be lefs certain, as at the 

 worlt there could only be the lofs of the plates, In place of 

 that of the paper and pre fs work of a whole edition, which, 

 in almofi every cafe, would amount to a much larger fun. 

 The expenfe, then, attending the procefs (if, indeed, Van 

 der May's was the lame as ours) was not the caufe of its 

 being laid afide in Holland. The probability is, that his art 

 died with him (elf ; for we find that Ged had " offers from 

 Holland, repeatedly, either to go over there, or fell them his 

 invention * ;" which would not have been the cafe had they 

 been poffeffed of their own countryman's. A. 1 . 



XL. Communication from Profeffor M. A. Pictet, of 



Geneva, (now in London,) on Flexible Stones, addrejjfed 

 to the Editor. 



SIR > Brompton 'Row, No. 45, 



Atfgttft 2D, iSoi. 



J.N reading lately in your very interefting Journal (Vol. X. 

 p. 83.) a description of the eL.Jlic qu artz, or flexible fand- 

 Jlone, from Brazil, I wondered that the author f had not 

 mentioned a fimilar phenomenon which has been obferved 

 in another ftony fubftance, commonly as inflexible as any 

 filiceous aggregate, but thoroughly different in point of che- 

 mical compofition — I mean the table of eiajlic marble, which 

 is (fiown at Rome as a great curiofity. A friend of mine, 

 M. Fleuriau de Bellevue, from La Rochelle, who had ttcn 

 *lt, gueffed at the caufe of its flexibility, and went fo far as 

 to render, by a particular procefs, any given fpecimen of 

 Carrara marble as evidently flexible as the table in queftion. 

 He purfued at Geneva the feries of experiments which led 

 him to that difcovery, and read to our Society of Phvfics and 

 islatural Hiftory an account of the whole, which has been 

 fince publilhed in La Metherie's Journal de Pbyjique. The 

 following are the. leading facts : 



That fpeeies of marble confifts, as you well know, in a 

 confufed aggregation of fmall irregular cryttals interwoven 



* Biographical Memoirs of W. Ged, p. 16, 

 f Klaproth. 



$3 ia 



