568 REPORT OF NATIONAL MUSEUM, 1893. 



uncommon to find mantels and chimney pieces of the stone in the 

 houses of people living- in the vicinity. Such, as a rale, are the work of 

 local stone dealers, and cut from blocks fouud loose in the fields. Fine 

 blocks of stone from caves that have been almost completely refilled 

 have been found near Lexington, in Eockbridg^e County, a slab some 

 18 inches square of which is among the collections of the National 

 Museum. In one of the extreme southwestern counties deposits 

 of this nature Avere worked some thirty years ago by a local stone- 

 cutter, bnt who, it needs scarcely be said, was a foreigner. The 

 material, singularly enough, was utilized mainly for tombstones. As a 

 result the churchyards of the region present an appearance quite 

 unique, and wholly unlike anytliing I ever saw elsewhere. In place of 

 the white marbhvs, gray granite, or dull slate of the ordinary church- 

 yard, we find here rows of white, amber, and resinous stalagmitic mar- 

 bles, some of which are translucent and still beautiful in spite of their 

 years of exposure, though naturally roughened and in some cases badly 

 flawed and seamed. 



Quarries in the broken-down caves of eastern Tennessee, southwest- 

 ern Missouri, and Arkansas have also been opened and worked for a 

 limited period, some of them furnishing a fair grade of material, but 

 for which there proved only a limited market. The attempt is invariably 

 made to utilize the product mainly for furniture tops ami wainscotings, 

 in M'hich line it must be brought into competition with the more desir- 

 able travertines and high-grade decorative colored marbles, as those of 

 Siena and Algeria. For small ornaments, vases, columns, and certain 

 forms of bas-relief the material is best adapted, and it is of little use 

 to seek a market elsewhere. 



Colorado, Utah, and New 2Iexieo. — Deposits in every way similar 

 to those noted above have been reported from Colorado, and, indeed, 

 are likely to occur in any limestone country. Dark and light amber 

 varieties were exhibited as from Pelican Point, Utah County, in the 

 Utah exhibit at the World's Columbian Exposition in 1893. A much 

 more striking variety was in the form of bright lemon and orange, 

 dark bnfi', and chrome yellow and white slabs from deposits near Lehi, 

 in the same Territory. The stone was beautifully translucent and 

 the colors of astonishing depth and brilliancy — so much so that it at 

 first seemed scarcely possible that they could be natural. The writer 

 was informed by Mr. F. T. Millis that the material occurs in the form 

 of a vein some 4 feet in width in limestone. Near Eio Puerco Station of 

 the Atlantic and Pacific Kailroad, in Valencia County, New Mexico, are 

 deposits of travertine, or stalagmitic matter, which have been exploited 

 thus far only in a ]>reliminary way. The stone varies from whitish to 

 deep smoky, almost black, and from translucent to opaque. The better 

 varieties show on a polished surface a silky luster and a radiating 

 fibrous structure. It is distinctly banded parallel with the plane of 

 deposition, tfie bands varying from faintly whitish to nearly black, the 

 dark bands being mere lines of inclosures. The stone, while lacking 



