STOCKBRIDGE MARBLE. 
351 
lence and durability. Some of the Vermont mar- 
bles are as white as the Carrara or statuary marble, 
receive a fine polish, and are extensively wrought 
for tombstones, chimney jambs, window caps, and 
other purposes. 
The Stockbridge marble is well known, as the 
Cit}'- Hall of New- York is built of it. It is a pure 
white, moderately fine grained, and very durable. 
The Lanesborough and Sheffield marble is very sim- 
ilar, and from the Sheffield quarries the marble is 
obtained which is now employed in the erection of 
the Girard College at Philadelphia. " A visit to 
this quarry," says Professor Hitchcock, " will give 
one, perhaps, the best idea of the value and extent 
of the Berkshire marbles, and, at the same time, of 
the power which the arts give to man over nature. 
To see masses more than fifty feet long, and six or 
eight feet thick, split out by the apparently feeble 
means employed, makes a strong impression on the 
mind, and recalls the history of the enormous 
blocks of stone quarried and removed by the pyra- 
mid builders of antiquity." It may with safety be 
said, that no marbles in the United States exceed 
in elegance and durability those of Berkshire coun- 
ty. The value of all the marble now exported from 
that county cannot be less than $70,000 annually, 
and the beds are inexhaustible. 
A very beautiful marble is obtained from near 
New-Haven (Connecticut), called the verd antique 
when it contains green colours, though its predom- 
inant colour is gray or blue, richly variegated with 
veins or clouds of white, black, or green, the last 
of which sometimes pervades a large mass. Some 
specimens exhibit clouds of a brilliant orange or 
gold yellow, associated with green serpentine and 
dove-coloured limestone. The black clouds and 
spots are occasioned by magnetic oxide of iron and 
chromate of iron, and green and yellow serpentine 
is also disseminated among it. There are foul 
