1883. 7Y Trans. N. V. Ac. Set. 



^ years, seasoning upon the seashore. Since then little or no attention 

 appears to have been paid to this important requirement by modern 

 architects, in the heedless haste of the energy of the times. Build- 

 ing-stone, even for many notable edifices, is hurried from the quarries 

 into its position in masonry, long before the " quarrj'-sap " has been 

 permitted, by its evaporation, to produce solid cementation in the 

 interstices of the stone. 



Position. The danger of setting up any lamina'ed material on edge, 

 rather than on its natural bedding-plane, has been widely acknow- 

 ledged ; yet it is of the rarest occurrence, in New York City, to observe 

 any attention paid to this rule, except where, from the small size or square 

 form of the blocks of stone employed, it has bfen really cheapest and 

 most convenient to pile them up on their flat sides. 



Form of projections. The principle is maintained by all the best 

 Englsh and French architects that projections (/>., cornices, sills, lin- 

 tels, etc.) should be " throated," that is undercut in such a way as to 

 throw off the dripping of rainwater, etc., from the front of the building 

 but in New York this principle is almost universally neglected. It was 

 pointed out that the severity of our climate even requires the further 

 care that the upper surface of projections should be so cut as to pre- 

 vent the lodgment or long retention of depos'ts either of rainwater or 

 snow. It is immediately above and below such deposits that the ash- 

 lar ot our fronts is most rapidly corroded and exfoliated, an effect evi- 

 dently due mainly to the repeated thawing and solution, freezing and 

 disintegration, which are caused by the water, slush and snow, which 

 rest, often for weeks, upon a window-sill, balcony, cornice, etc. Thus 

 from the initial and inexcusable carelessness in the construction and 

 form of the projections, and, later, the neglect of the houseowner, due 

 to ignorance ot the results involved, to remove the deposits of snow, 

 etc., as fast as they accumulate on the projections, is derived a large part 

 of the discoloration of the marble, Nova Scotia stone, or light colored 

 granyte, and especially the exfoliation of the brownstone beneath the 

 window-sills, balconies, etc., by the water alternately trickling down 

 the front and freezing, by day and by night, for long periods. 



The artificial means of preservation are of two classes, organic 

 and inorganic. The former depend on the application of some organic 

 substance in a coating or on the injection of fatty matters ; but, as 

 the substances are with greater or less rapidity oxidized, dissolved, 

 and carried away by the atmospheric fluids, the methods founded on 

 their use have been properly denounced by many authorities as only 

 costly palliatives, needing frequent repetition, and therefore exerting 

 an influence toward the destruction of delicate carving. The following 



