38G REPORT ON NATIONAL MUSEUM, 1886. 



variegated. This presents an extremely compact base of a grayish, 

 or light lavender-tint, which is traversed by fine, irregular lines of a red 

 and purple color. The stone acquires an excellent surface and polish, 

 but is so hard as to work with great difficulty. 



Utah. — A yellowish white crystalline limestone, that can scarcely be 

 called a marble, was received at the Museum from Payson, in this Terri- 

 tory, and a compact nearly black stone, interspersed with numerous 

 white fossil shells, from the San Pete Valley. Neither stone can lay 

 any claim to beauty, though possibly the last mentioned might be made 

 to do as marble under certain circumstances. 



Vermont. — Since this is the leading marble-producing State of the 

 Union a brief description of the chief geological features of the marble 

 formations may not be out of place here. According to Professor 

 Brainard* this formation extends along the western borders of the 

 States of Connecticut, Massachusetts, and Vermont, between the Green 

 Mountain elevation, which extends from the Canada line nearly to Long 

 Island Sound, and the intermittent Taconic Mountains, which extend 

 south of Lake Champlaiu, and in places admit the marble veins within 

 the border of New York. Of these immense formations, which are from 

 1,000 to 2,000 feet in thickness, the lower portion, known to geologists 

 ns the calciferous (300 to 400 feet in thickness), is for the most part 

 siliceous, partaking of the nature of the sandrock that underlies it. 

 The upper portion, known as the Trenton (500 to GOO feet in thickness), 

 is impure from the presence of clayey matter, partaking of the nature of 

 the slate formation that overlies it. Only certain layers of the middle 

 portions seem to have been fitted by their original constitution for the 

 production of marble. 



These strata in Rutland and Addison Counties appear in two parallel 

 lines about 2 miles apart, stretching from the north line of Middlebury 

 to the south line of Rutland, and are from 100 to 200 feet in thickness. 

 The limits of the formation may be best understood by reference to 

 the accompanying map (Plate vn), redrawn from Professor Brainard's 

 report.! 



Professor Hitchcock % conveniently divides the marbles of this State 

 into four groups or classes: (1) the common white and bluish or Eolian 

 marble (so called from its occurring extensively on Mount Eolus) ; (2) 

 the Winooski ; (3) the variegated of Plymouth, and (4) the dark, almost 

 black, of Isle La Motte. Of these the Eolian is most abundant by far, 

 and is most extensively quarried. In texture the stone is fine-grained 

 and often saecharoidal, though less so than the Italian marbles. In 

 color it varies from pure snowy white through all shades of bluish, and 

 sometimes greenish, often beautifully mottled and veined, to nearly 

 black, the bluish and black varieties being as a rule the finest and most 

 durable. 



* The Marble Border of Western New England, p. i>. 

 *■ By permission of the Middlebury Historical Society, 

 t lieology of Vermont, Vol. n. page 752. 



