GEOLOGY. 259 



veteran father of English geology (William Smith), has been 

 intrusted by the British government with the care of selecting 

 the material of which the new houses of Parliament were to be 

 constructed ; and, after a tour made in the course of last year 

 for this express purpose, to the points where the best building 

 stones were supposed to be quarried, they made choice of the 

 magnesian limestone of Yorkshire, remarkable for the dura- 

 bility of its color, texture, and sharpest forms, as exemplified 

 in the noble old churches of that country. But this magne- 

 sian limestone of Yorkshire, thus selected by some of the 

 most experienced geologists in the world as the best building 

 stone in England, is, as we have already shown, if not the 

 equivalent of the cliff limestone of Wisconsin, a rock very 

 closely resembling it. The inference is, that some of the 

 strata of the cliff limestone of Wisconsin may be expected to 

 furnish building materials of a quality the most superior. 



" The canal engineers on Rock River complained much 

 that they could find no durable building stone, having quar- 

 ried in the white limestone w^hich occurs in the margin of the 

 , great coal-field. This rock (at that point, at least) is little 

 suitable for building purposes. Had these gentlemen 

 ascended the Missisippi to the high land above the Mako- 

 queta for material, they would have found quarries of the 

 building stone above-described, and their locks might have 

 bid defiance to the ravages of time. 



" Near Iowa city, and in several other localities along the 

 junction of the chff limestone and the coal-measures, occurs 

 a white limestone, which must not be confounded with the 

 above. It is capable of receiving a good polish ; and, being 

 studded with a beautiful fossil coralline (the stylina of 

 Lesueur), forms a pretty variegated marble. One of my 

 sub-agents found a settler building his milk-house of this 

 showy material, in which the cyathophyllum of Goldfuss was 



