OF SELBORNE. 23 
fied coat like glass, that it is well preserved from 
injuries of weather, and endures thirty or forty 
years. When chiselled smooth, it makes elegant 
fronts for houses, equal in colour and grain to the 
Bath stone, and superior in one respect, that, when 
seasoned, it does not scale. Decent chimney-pie- 
ces are worked from it, of much closer and finer 
grain than Portland stone, and rooms are floored 
with it; but it proves rather too soft for this pur- 
pose. It is a freestone, cutting in all directions, 
yet has something of a grain parallel with the ho. 
rizon, and therefore should not be surbedded, but 
laid in the same position that it grows in the quar- 
ry.* On the ground abroad this firestone will not 
succeed for pavements, because, probably, some de- 
gree of saltness prevailing within it, the rain tears 
the slabs to pieces.— ‘Though this stone is too 
hard to be acted on by vinegar, yet both the white 
part, and even the blue rag, ferment strongly in 
mineral acids. ‘Though the white stone will not 
bear wet, yet in every quarry, at intervals, there 
are thin strata of blue rag, which resist rain and 
frost, and are excellent for pitching of stables, 
paths, and courts, and for building of dry walls 
against banks; a valuable species of fencing, much 
in use in this village, and for mending of roads. 
This rag is rugged and stubborn, and will not hew 
to a smocth face, but is very durable ; yet, as these 
* To surbed stone is to set it edgewise, contrary to the pos- 
ture it had in the quarry, says Dr. Plot, Oxfordish., p. 77. But 
surbedding does not succeed in our dry walls; neither do we 
use it so in ovens, though he says it is best for Teynton stone. 
+ ‘‘ Firestone is full of salts, and has no sulphur: must be 
close-grained, and have no interstices. Nothing supports fire 
like salts; saltstone perishes exposed to wet and frost.” — 
Piot’s Staff., p. 152. 
