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yellowish-white color. The texture is composed of fine 
shining scales or crystals, lying in all directions. This the 
ancients knew as lychnites, on account of its quarries being 
worked by means of lamps. Of this they did not carve their 
finest statuary, although the Medicean Venus is composed of 
it. They had also the white marble of Carrara, between 
Spezia and Lucca, which was of an excellent quality and fine 
white color, although it is frequently traversed by grey veins, 
which have to be avoided when statuary is cut from it. It is 
mot apt to turn yellow in tint, as is the case with the Parian 
marble. This quarry is still worked, and yields some of the 
finest statuary marble in use. 
The quarry at Middlebury, Addison County, Vermont, 
yields a marble of an almost white color, having however, 
an extremely delicate flesh tint, which strikingly contributes 
to its value as a statuary marble. Mr. Grenough, the sculp- 
tor, has pronounced it of very superior quality, and, in fact, 
the best in the world. One face of it which lies upon the 
side of the hill, through which it extends, dips at an angle 
of about forty-five degrees, and is of a considerable extent, 
and smoothly polished by glacial action. At some places 
grooves have been ploughed out by the ice, but one large face 
is as flat and polished, as if done by art for a special purpose. 
A fragment chipped out from this plane with some difficulty 
was exhibited, and it was of such thinness, as to permit light 
to pass through it, and demonstrate the very superior texture 
of the stone. At Middlebury, a series of marble beds are 
exposed in the quarry, having an aggregate thickness of over 
150 feet, the strata varying from 5 to 12 feet each, the greater 
portion being pure white in color, and much of it of the very 
finest quality. ‘Thus it is seen that we have in this country, 
ample supplies of the very best quality of statuary marble. 
