96 Mr 11. M. Stoker on the China-stone and 



nearest ports to be shipped for the potteries of Staffordshire 

 and Worcestershire. These ports are distant seven or nine 

 miles from the quarries, entailing in this transport a con- 

 siderable amount of land carriage, and a consequent increase 

 in the price, which of late years has been raised from 12s. 

 to 20s. free on board, at Par, Pentewan, or Charlestown ; 

 still the demand has by no means diminished, and the pro- 

 prietors of these sets have been obliged to fix a certain limit 

 to their annual supply of 18,000 tons, which rate of consump- 

 tion will have effected the removal of all the China-stone in 

 these beds in rather less than fifty years. 



The number of people employed in its preparation are com- 

 paratively few, as the operation of blasting requires but two 

 or three persons in each pit ; and in loading the waggons the 

 parties employed as carriers are but too eager to fill in order 

 to gain a load. The before-mentioned reasons render the 

 question of supply an important one, and one well worthy 

 the attention of the land-owner as to future resources, and 

 the influence the discovery of any large bed of good stone 

 would exert on his pocket ; though, while the present sets 

 of the China-stone Company of Cornwall hold out, they not 

 only can but will maintain a monopoly. 



China-stone, in its present state, consists of a mixture of 

 quartz, felspar, and mica, blended so as to form a homo- 

 geneous mass which very much resembles granite, though its 

 texture is not so compact ; the quartz exists in small bluish- 

 white and transparent crystals, the edges of which, by the 

 process of disintegration, are rendered more or less indistinct, 

 and they have become more transparent than when in the 

 form of granite. These crystals are imbedded in a mixture 

 of white felspar which has lost a portion of its potash, and 

 small opaque scales of mica having a lustrous silvery aspect 

 and very thin : the granite from which it has been formed is of 

 the simplest kind, the more common forms containing, in addi- 

 tion to the mica, quartz and felspar, which may be either red 

 or gray, crystals and scales of hornblende, diallage, or talc, 

 with a more or less appreciable amount of iron, indicated by 

 the black spots formed on fusion or calcination ; and as the 

 chemical composition of this article, when pure, should indi- 



