BUILDING MATERIALS. 8/ 



I have visited this locality several times. The bed is regular, not nodu- 

 lar like the steatite and serpentine beds in Vermont. The opening is 80 

 feet long, 40 wide, and 80 deep, a little wider at the bottom than at the 

 top. The bed has been followed for 400 feet in length. The peculiarity 

 of the stone consists in the uniform distribution through it of spherical 

 radiated aggregations of crystalline plates of talc. These make the stone 

 uniformly strong in all directions, unlike most of the Vermont rock, 

 which is apt to split along seams of original structure. The Frances- 

 town stone has largely superseded that from Vermont for the manufac- 

 ture of stoves. I have already alluded to the dissemination of minute 

 crystalline bits of pyrrhotite disseminated through the soapstone without 

 seemingly injuring it. 



The presence of radiated spherules marks this bed in its stratigraphical 

 distribution. Other beds of it are found in Weare, Warner, Canterbury, 

 and Richmond. The first named is near the top of Mt. Misery, and has 

 been quite extensively opened by Hon. M. A. Hodgdon. I saw it first 

 in 1869, and judged the bed to be 15 feet wide and quite hard. The 

 stone had the same lithological features with that in Francestown, and 

 occupies the same stratigraphical position. The excavation was about 

 10 feet deep. Two or three years later, the bed had been better defined 

 by additional excavation. The hole in 1874 was seen to be 71 feet long 

 and 60 feet wide, representing the width of the soapstone. Two or three 

 large bunches of hard rock — horses — occur in it, one of them estimated to 

 be 35 feet long. In going down there was seen, first, the common country 

 rock, underlaid by a coarse-grained ledge with long hornblende crystals 

 capping the soapstone. The latter rock is at the top inferior to that 

 found lower down. Small bunches of granitic rock occurred occasion- 

 ally ; and the pyrrhotite showed itself in a vein three inches wide. The 

 work was prosecuted far enough to determine the nature of the stone 

 underneath the principal horse. The material was soft, but somewhat 

 shelly. The great improvement in the appearance of the stone over what 

 it was on the surface leads us to believe that good material will event- 

 ually be quarried here. 



Mr. Hodgdon has also opened the ledge in the south-east corner of 

 Warner, in the same bed, or its repetition by a fold. The bed is over 20 

 feet in width, and deserves to be opened more fully. 



