364 rocks. 



ble is quarried annually to the value of $200,000 ; the pii 

 cipal quarries are at Sheffield, West Stockbridge, New 

 Ashford, New Marlborough, Great Barrington, and Lanes- 

 borough.* The columns of the Girard College are from 

 Sheffield, where blocks 50 feet long are sometimes blasted 

 out ; the material of the City Hall, New York, came from 

 West Stockbridge ; that of the Capitol at Albany, from Lanes- 

 boro'. At Stoneham is a fine statuary marble ; but it is dif- 

 ficult to obtain large blocks. The variety from Great Bar- 

 rington is a handsome clouded marble. Some of the West 

 Stockbridge marble is flexible in thin pieces when first taken 

 out. There are Vermont localities at Dorset, Rutland, 

 Brandon, and Pittsford. In" New York extensive quarries 

 are opened not far from New York, at Sing Sing ; also at Pat- 

 terson, Putnam county ; at Dover in Dutchess county, N. Y. ; 

 in Connecticut there are marble quarries at New Preston ; 

 in Maine at Thomaston : in Rhode Island at Smithfield, a 

 fine statuary ; in Maryland, a few miles east of Hagerstown ; 

 in Pennsylvania, a fine clouded variety, 20 miles from 

 Philadelphia. A fine dun colored marble is obtained at New 

 Ashford and Sheffield, Mass., and at Pittsford, Vt. 



The granular limestone when coarse usually crumbles 

 easily, and is not a good material for building. But the 

 best varieties are not exceeded in durability by any other 

 architectural rock, not even by granite. The impurities are 

 sometimes so abundant as to render it useless. For statu- 

 ary, it is essential that it should be uniform in tint and with- 

 out seams or fissures ; the liability of finding cloudings within 

 the large blocks makes them useless for statuary. The pres- 

 ence of pyrites or manganese unfits the stone for buildings. 



The common minerals in this rock are tremolite, asbestus, 

 scapolite, chondrodite, pyroxene, apatite, besides sphene, 

 spinel, graphite, idocrase, mica. 



Verd antique marble — verde antico — is a clouded green 

 marble, consisting of a mixture of serpentine and limestone, 

 as mentioned under Serpentine, page 147. It occurs at 

 Milford, near New Haven, Connecticut, of fine ouality ; and 

 also in Essex county, N. Y., at Moria and near Port Henry 

 n Lake Champlain. A marble of this kind occurs at 

 Genoa and in Tuscany, and is much valued for its beauty 

 A variety is called polzivera di Genoa and vert d'Egypte. 



* Hitchcock's Geol. Rep., p. 162. 



