THE TRIASSIC SANDSTONE AS A BUILDING STONE, 391 



(which is remarkable, as there is here no other trace of marked lieat 

 action), together with veins of coarse-fibrous calcite, grains of galena, and 

 films of gypsum. Other cubes are flat-faced, but a little elongate, and made 

 of fine-grained calcite. At times the rays are broadly bordered by delicate 

 feathery growths of white limestone, which shows a fine, concretionary, 

 almost oolitic structure vender the microscope. 



The thin-bedded rusty sandstone from the island at Turners Falls, which 

 contains the ferruginous concretions, contains also remarkable salt pseudo- 

 morphs — skeleton cubes with each bar nearly an inch long. The interspaces 

 are now filled with limonite, which was doubtless at first an iron carbonate. 



THE USE OF THE TRIASSIC SANDSTONE AS A BUILDING STONE. 



The Sugar Loaf arkose is somewhat used for rude masonry, such as 

 embankments, walls, bridge piers, etc. The large quarry on the northwest 

 shoulder of Mount Tom furnished the stone for the piers of the railroad 

 bridge over the Connecticut River at Northampton, and had 1)een long 

 worked for similar purposes. The I'ock is too coarse for architecturaLuse; 

 if it were riot its light color would make it very valuable. 



The Longmeadow sandstone, under the name " brownstone," has been 

 for a long time in high repute as a building stone of the greatest value, and 

 it has been exported to great distances and employed upon the most expen- 

 sive buildings. The report ]\Iineral Resources of the United States for 

 1890^ states that the sandstone ])roduced in Massachusetts during that year 

 was valued at 8649,097, and of this amount 8.063,179 was furnished by 

 Hampden County, and came from the quarries extending south from Six- 

 teen Acres, in Springfield, to East Longmeadow. 



The following, copied from an article in the Springfield Republican 

 of May 9, 1884, and verified by me in all important particulars, gives a 

 good account of the industry at that date: 



The Norcross Brothers are the largest shippers of stone from Ea.st Long- 

 meadow, having last year loaded 115,000 cubic feet of brownstone for building 

 purposes on about 900 freight cars. In addition to this amount, 35,000 cubic feet 

 was quarried during the year, but kept iu the yard to furnish winter work tor the 

 stonecutters. Two i|uarries, located within a mile of the East Longmeadow depot, 

 the Saulsbury and Kibbe, furnish all but a small part of the product and give 



' Issued by the United States Geological Survey, p. 402. 



