388 REPORT ON NATIONxiL MUSEUM, 1886. 



blocks iire tiikeii out for building purposes. Some of tlic most valu- 

 able, according to Professor Seely,* are kuowu as the x^lark and liglit 

 mournbuj vein varieties. The dark mouruing- vein has a ground of deei) 

 blue, while lines, nearly black, ruu through it in a zigzag course, pre- 

 senting a beautiful appearance. The light mourning vein has simikir 

 veins, but the ground is lighter. The quarries at this place are de- 

 scribed by Professor Seely as being in the form of a hollow cube cut 

 into a hill with i)erpendicular walls on the north and west rising to a 

 height of nearly 100 feet, open to the sky, and with an acre of rock 

 forming its horizontal marble floor. Over this floor are running chan- 

 neling machines, cutting out long parallel blocks which are afterwards 

 cut up into convenient size, lifted from their beds, and taken to the mills 

 to be sawn. Some sixty gangs of saws are kept running here day and 

 night during the busy season, and not less than five hundred persons, all 

 told, are emifloyed in and about the (piarries. The workmen are of many 

 nationalities, including English, Scotch, Welsh, Irish, Canadian, and 

 Italian. 



As stated by Professor Hitchcock, t the beds of the Eolian variety of 

 marble are not restricted to one locality but extend over a large portion 

 of western Vermont, the formation in which it occurs extending the entire 

 length of the State, usually interstratitied with siliceous and uiagnesian 

 limestones. The strata vary in thickness from a few inches to C or 8 

 feet, the thickest beds being usually found where the marble is coarse- 

 grained and friable. Prom Dorset the beds thin out toward the nortli, 

 the more northerly beds, though thinner, usually furnishing the finer 

 grained and more compact stone. It is stated J that Pittsfurd has 

 the honor of having one of the earliest quarries in the State, if not 

 the earliest, Jeremiah Sheldon having worked marble here as early 

 as 17*J5. There are three beds or veins of marble running through 

 the town, north and south. The most easterly has a breadth of 

 some 200 feet, and the stone is of the same character as that at Suthor- 

 land Palls or Proctor, as the town is now called. The middle bed 

 is separated from the first by about UOO feet of lime rock. The bed 

 itself is some 400 feet wide, and the stone varies in color from i)ure 

 white to dark blue. The third or west bed which is thought to corre- 

 spond to that of West liutland is about half a mile west of the central 

 and is about -iOO feet wide. The stone is dark-blue and often beauti- 

 fully mottled. Some of the beds here, as at' West Kutland, furnish a 

 beautiful snow-white saccharoidal stone suitable for statuary i)uri)oses, 

 for which it has been used to a slight extent. The Vermont statuary 

 marble, however, differs from its Italian prototype, in being of a dead 

 M'hite color and lacking the mellow, waxy luster so characteristic of 

 the Italian stone. 



* Oj). cit., p. 41. 



tCieolojijy of Vcrmout, Vol. II, p. 772. 



I The Marble Border of Wcsteru New Eiigliiuil, ji. IG. 



