118 MALLET, VINDHYAN SERIES. 



bedding and each other, so that squared blocks were extracted ready 

 made. The new road and dkk bungalows in the Sipri district are 

 built entirely of stone. The flat roofs are formed of flags supported on 

 long stone joists stretching from wall to wall, and the floors are made of 

 a similar material. 



The lower Bundair sandstone is a harsh gritty material, mostly 

 rather coarse-grained and thin-bedded, so that it is never used except for 

 rough work. The upper sandstone on the contrary produces some of 

 the finest stone procurable from the Vindhyans. It is very extensively 

 employed wherever there is any demand for building stone, but the most 

 celebrated quarries are those to the south of Bhurtpur, which have 

 supplied Agra, Delhi,* Muttra, and all the other cities and towns of that 

 region. The Rupas quarries are amongst the best known, and have been 

 worked for a very long period. There are two marked varieties of stone, 

 one a dark-red kind, sometimes purely red, but generally speckled with 

 small yellowish-white spots, or sometimes the white is dispose'd in 

 streaks parallel with the bedding, or in large irregular blotches. The 

 other is a yellowish-white, very fine-grained rock, perfectly homogeneous 

 both in texture and color. Generally speaking in any one quarry only 

 one of these two varieties occurs, but sometimes both are found 

 interbanded. 



The red variety is for architectural purposes much inferior to 

 the white. The irregularity of its coloring greatly mars the effect, as will 

 be recollected by any one who has visited the Taj, where the frequent 

 juxtaposition of red and partially white blocks of sandstone, and the 

 streaked and blotched appearance of others form a most unsightly 

 blemish in that noble and almost faultless mausoleum. Some specimens 

 of the red sandstone also are liable to disintegration from the effects of 

 time, although others are little, if at all, inferior to the white in this 



* Bisliop Heber, in Ms journal, has described the buildings of Delhi as composed of 

 red granite, an error which is worth calling attention to, as it has been repeated, on his 

 authority, in more than one more recent work. 



( 118 ) 



