THE MIXING AXD QL'ARKV INDUSTRY I908 61 



around Cleveland in Oswego county. A quantity of glass sand was 

 at one time produced in Oneida county from the Oneida lake area 

 and a quartz rock was crushed at Ellenville in Ulster county. The 

 exhaustion of some of the Oneida lake beds and the closing down 

 of a number of the Xew York State glass factories have combined, 

 however, to bring the industry to its present condition. ' 



Building sand. The one great universal use of sand is for build- 

 ing purposes, either mixed with cement, making cement mortar or 

 mixed with lime to form the ordinary lime mortar. For these 

 purposes, specifications usually call for a clean, sharp sand free 

 from clay or other impurities and frequently stipulate that it be 

 screened. The addition of sand to portland cement, if the proper 

 sand and mixture are used, not only decreases the final cost as 

 compared to pure cement, but also increases the strength of the 

 resulting mortar. Experiments carried on by ^Mr L. C. Sabin^ seem 

 to indicate that the mineral composition of the sand need not 

 necessarily be of quartz grains but that a sand composed of any 

 mineral, even limestone, will make a good mortar, provided that the 

 grains are not of such a character as to undergo further serious 

 alteration. In regard to the shape of grain he states that sharp and 

 angular grains are the most satisfactory although lenticular grains 

 give good satisfaction. The sand should be of coarse grain or a 

 mixture of coarse and fine grains, such sands packing together so 

 as to leave less pore space and therefore requiring a relatively small 

 amount of cement to form an impervious mortar. A small per- 

 centage of clay or rock dust is not objectionable provided the mortar 

 is not to come in contact with sea water which causes some disin- 

 tegration of such a material. 



New York State is well supplied with building sand. The 

 greater part of the State was buried under the glacial sheet during 

 the glacial period and instead of a mantle of residual clay such as 

 covers nonglaciated areas, we have covering the surface an irregu- 

 lar mantle of boulder clay containing pockets of stratified sand and 

 gravel, sorted and deposited by the glacial streams and lakes, while 

 the more recent waters have also re-sorted some of the material and 

 deposited it along the present streams. Almost every farm in 

 central and western Xew York contains a sand and gravel pit ; 

 large amounts are found along the Niagara river. Lake Eric, Eake 

 Ontario, while the borders of the Hudson have some large banks 

 of it which were deposited while the Hudson river waters were at 



1 Sabin, L. C. Cement and Concrete. Xew York. 1007. p. 184. 



