BUILDING AND ORNAMENTAL STONES. . 415 



one of the most beautiful gray granites for monumental work with wliicli 

 the author is acquainted. Blocks 1)0 by 80 by feet have been moved 

 out in some of these quarries. Specimens of this granite tested at the 

 Centennial Exposition at Philadelphia in 1876 showed a crushing 

 strength of 22,000 pounds per square inch. In the quarries the stone 

 lies in sheets from 3 to 10 feet in thickness. The principal markets are 

 Philadelphia, New York, Chicago, Harrisburg, and Washington, D. C. 



Two varieties of granite are quarried at Mount Waldo, in the town of 

 Frankfort. Both are light-gray rocks, frequently porphyritic through 

 large white orthoclase crystals. Both varieties are of the same mineral 

 couq)osition, the difference being simply one of texture, one being quite 

 coarse and somewhat porphyritic, while the other is much finer and of 

 more even texture. As would naturally be expected, the finer grade is 

 the better and more durable rock, the coarser variety being more liable 

 to crumble. The mica occurs in large flakes, which the microscoiie 

 shows to be freipiently pierced by small crystals of apatite. A part of 

 the mica is greenish in color and contains a few small grains of epidote. 

 An occasional tlako of Avhite mica was noticed in this rock, and there 

 is ])resent the usual sprinkling of magnetite granules, together with 

 an occasional cube of pyrite. Quarries were opened at Mt. Waldo in 

 1853, and single blocks 80 by 40 by 20 feet have been taken out and 

 afterward cut up. It is estimated that blocks 150 by 50 by 12 feet could 

 be obtained if desired. The rock has been used largely in the building 

 of forts on the coast of Maine, but is also used for all purposes, both 

 ornamental and otherwise, to which granite is usually applied, and has 

 been shipped as far South as Mobile and New Orleans. It is a beautiful 

 stone when polished. The principal quarry is situated on Mt. Waldo, 

 overlooking the Penobscot Eiver, at an elevation of some 320 feet above 

 high tide. 



The quarries at Vinalhaven, in Penobscot liay, are the most exten- 

 sive of any at present in operation in this country. (Quarries were first 

 opened here about 1850, and the present annual product is upwards of 

 200,000 cubic feet, valued at some $110,000. Upwards of six hundred 

 men are regularly employed at the works, though the number has at 

 times risen as high as one thousand five hundred. The capabilities of 

 the quarries can be best illustrated by stating that during a visit of the 

 writer to these quarries in the summer of 1883 he was shown the re- 

 mains of a huge block of granite 300 feet long, 20 feet wide, and vary- 

 ing from (I to 10 feet in thickness, that had been loosened from the 

 quarry in a single piece and afterward broken up. The largest block 

 ever quarried and dressed was the General Wool monument, now in 

 Troy, N. Y., which measured, when finished, CO feet in height by 5.] feet 

 square at the base, or only feet 7 inches shorter than the Egyptian 

 obelisk now in Central Park, New York. 



In texture the Vinalhaven rock is rather coarse and the general color 

 gray, although the prevailing feldspar is sometimes of a light flesh- 



