Mineralogy of Sky, 111 



terial, and the advantages derived from lower freight duty and 

 insurance. Such are the difficulties which oppose the intro- 

 duction of the most perfect marble which has yet been found in 

 Britain, difficulties which, slight as they are, ought, together with 

 the prevalence of established habits and of a commercial routine, 

 to check the extravagant hopes which have been entertained in this 

 country of superseding by its own produce the importation of 

 foreign statuary marble. But it will not be rendering justice to the 

 marble of Sky if I do not add, that it possesses a property not 

 found in that of Carrara, and one of considerable importance, at 

 least in small sculptures. This is, that compactness of texture by 

 which it resists the bruise which so often takes place in marble 

 at the point where the chisel stops, an effect known to sculptors 

 by the technical term stunning^ and of which the result is a dis- 

 agreeable opake white mark, generally in the very place where 

 the deepest shadow is wanted. 



I have little to add respecting the marble of Glen Tilt, as I have 

 spoken of it in another place. Except the somewhat larger size 

 of its grain, it is scarcely to be distinguished from the Pentelic : ia 

 colour it is precisely similar ; but as the character and defects of 

 the Pentelic, which I have already given, are equally applicable to 

 this variety, we may fairly abandon all hope of rendering it useful 

 in the art of sculpture. 



