388 REPORT ON NATIONxVL MUSEUM, 1886. 



blocks tire taken out for building purposes. Some of tbe most valu- 

 able, according to Professor Seely,* are known as tbe dark and light 

 mourning vein varieties. Tbe dark mourning vein lias a ground of deep 

 blue, wbile lines, nearly black, run tbrougb it in a zigzag course, pre 

 senting a beautiful appearance. Tbe light mourning vein has similar 

 veins, but tbe ground is ligbter. Tbe quarries at tbis place are de- 

 scribed by Professor Seely as being in tbe form of a hollow cube cut 

 into a hill with perpendicular walls on the north and west rising to a 

 beigbt of nearly 100 feet, open to tbe sky, and with an acre of rock 

 forming its horizontal marble floor. Over tbis floor are running chan- 

 neliug machines, cutting out long parallel blocks wbicb are afterwards 

 cut up into convenient size, lifted from their beds, and taken to tbe mills 

 to be sawn. Some sixty gangs of saws are kept running bere day and 

 night during the busy season, and not less than five hundred persons, all 

 told, are employed in and about the quarries. The workmen are of many 

 nationalities, including English, Scotch, Welsh, Irish, Canadian, and 

 Italian. 



As stated by Professor Hitchcock, t the beds of tbe Eolian variety of 

 marble are not restricted to one locality but extend over a large portion 

 of western Vermont, the formation in which it occurs extending the entire 

 length of the State, usually interstratified with siliceous and maguesian 

 limestones. The strata vary in thickness from a few inches to or 8 

 feet, the thickest beds being usually found where the marble is coarse- 

 grained and friable. From Dorset the beds thin out toward the north, 

 the more northerly beds, though thinner, usually furnishing the finer 

 grained and more compact stone. It is stated | that Pittsford has 

 the honor of having one of the earliest quarries in the State, if not 

 tbe earliest, Jeremiah Sheldon having worked marble bere as early 

 as 1705. There are three beds or veins of marble running through 

 the town, north and south. The most easterly has a breadth of 

 some 200 feet, and the stone is of the same character as that at Suther- 

 land Falls or Proctor, as the town is now called. The middle bed 

 is separated from the first by about 1500 feet of lime rock. The bed 

 itself is some 400 feet wide, and the stone varies in color from pure 

 white to dark blue. The third or west bed which is thought to corre- 

 spond to that of West Eutland is about half a mile west of the central 

 and is about 400 feet wide. The stone is dark-blue and often 'beauti- 

 fully mottled. Some of the beds here, as at West Eutland, furnish a 

 beautiful snow-white saccharoidal stone suitable for statuary purposes, 

 for which it has been used to a slight extent. The Vermont statuary 

 marble, however, differs from its Italian prototype, in being of a dead 

 white color and lacking the mellow, waxy luster so characteristic of 

 the Italian stone. 



* Op. tit., p. 41. 



t Geology of Vermont, Vol. II, p. 772. 



$ Tbe Marble Border of Western New England, p. 40. 



