No. 200.] 
171 
land of Mr. M. was worked as a marble quarry 20 or 30 years ago, 
but has been abandoned. It is a beautiful clouded gray marble. 
Other quarries have been worked in several places to a small extent, 
but tke demand for the particular kinds was not sufficient to make them 
profitable. 
Marhle was sent to the New- York market some years ago from New- 
Lebanon, which sold for $1 per square foot. Six quarries were opened 
in that township, and from one of them slabs 14 feet in length were ob- 
tained.* The limestone beds of New-Lebanon and Hillsdale are inter- 
stratified with talcose and talco-arsillaceous slates, and seem to pitch 
under the mountains on the east, which are talcose, mica and chloritic 
slates. The Stockbridge and Egremont beds, which have many j)oints 
of resemblance, seem to overlay these same rocks. 
The value of the marble quarries in Egremont, Stockbridge, &c. is 
well known. They are almost as important to our citizens as if they 
were located within our own boundaries. Their products are entire- 
ly sent into our territory and shipped from our ports; and these, to- 
gether with those of Dutchess county, are supposed to yield about 
$100,000 per annum. 
Beds of marble, as good as those of Stockbridge and Egremont, un- 
doubtedly exist in Hillsdale and Copake, in Columbia county, west 
of the mountains, and in North-East, Amenia, Dover, Pawlings, Beek- 
man and Fishkill, in Dutchess county. The occurrence of beds suita- 
ble for marble west of the moimtainsy is important, in consequence of the 
diminished expense of transportation to tide water on the Hudson. The 
marble trade is already an important branch of industry, and in our ter- 
ritory it must necessarily be one which will rapidly increase in value and 
importance. The marble beds here and in Westchester county are more 
convenient to water transportation than in other parts of the United 
States, where the marbles are of similar quality. The strata also are 
thicker, and blocks of almost any desired magnitude can be quarried. 
The large blocks for the columns of the Girard College, in Philadelphia, 
are quarried in Egremont, Mass., very near the line of Massachusetts 
and New- York. The marble business is one that will always employ 
many men and much capital, and this valuable material is so abundant 
that it is perfectly inexhaustible in any finite period of time, and it will 
always be an -unfailing source of wealth. I consider the resources of 
* Silliraan'8 Journal, V. p. 10. 
