American Verd Antique Marble. 165 
and decorum, which appear to be effectually secured by the 
simple expedient of having the names of the authors attach- 
ed to their respective pieces: this example is worthy of 
imitation and praise.—I trust I shall often draw on this 
work ; at present my limits permit me to extract only a 
single article. 
American Verd Antique Marble. 
es, 
* United States—An excellent quarry of Marble has 
been discovered in the vicinity of New-Haven, province 
(town) of Milford. A traveller in Connecticut pronounces 
this marble to belong to the beautiful species which is in 
Europe called Verd Antique, and which is found only in 
the palaces of the great, and in cabinets of natural history. 
Indeed, says this traveller, it surpasses in beauty all that I 
have seen of this kind. Itisa great advantage that this 
quarry furnishes very large blocks, and that itis inexhausti- 
ble. 
Mr. Brongniart of Paris, the celebrated mineralogist, in 
2 letter now before me, speaking of the Milford Marble of 
which I sent him, among others, a polished specimen, says— 
“it forms one of the ornaments of my cabinet, and is referred 
with great precision to my Ophicalce Veinée,”* (or verd 
antique marble.) Some persons in this country confounding 
the verd antique marble with the verd antique porphyry, have 
denied to the Milford marble its proper rank: a rank which, 
truth requires me to say, has always been assigned it in the 
lectures here. It was discovered in 1811, by a member of . 
the mineralogical class, while I was out with them on an 
excursion for instruction and observation. ‘The farmers had 
made stone walls of it for almost two centuries, without sus- 
pecting what it was. 
Professor Kidd of the University of Oxford, to whom 1 
sent a specimen, and whose opinion I asked as to its geo- 
logical character, says—‘‘ the serpentine would by some be 
referred to a transition series; by others to a primitive: 
but Tam happy in thinking that the terms Primitive and 
Transition are daily becoming of less importance.” 
* Literally a veined serpentine limestone, and among the synonymes in 
Mr, Brongniart’s treatise on the nomenclatare of rocks, the ophicalce 
veinée is called Verd Antique.— Ed. 
