ECONOMICAL GEOLOGY. 
305 
limestone range, both on Hantehaleh and Talley River, contains beds of 
very fine marble of various colors, white, pink (or flesh-colored), black, 
gray, drab and mottled. It is capable of a very fine polish, and will one 
day, (when the difficulties of transportation shall be overcome), acquire a 
high value in architecture, as well as in other ornamental arts. In this 
last connection some of the serpentine beds may be mentioned as likely 
to come into use, and so to acquire a market value. 
Millstone and Grindstone Grits, &c. 
The sandstone just described are, in many places, well adapted to the 
purposes of grindstones, and during the war, while the foreign supply 
was cut oft', they were largely so used. The Anson county quarries 
furnish a very fine grindstone and whetstone grit. 
The conglomerates of the Triassic series, which are associated with and 
replace the sandstones above mentioned have been long and widely used 
for millstones. They have been principally obtained from Moore county, 
on MeLennan’s Creek, where they are obtained of excellent quality ; and 
they have been distributed from this point, over a large number of the 
intervening counties, to the Blue Ridge. Some of these stones have been 
in, use for 50 years; and they are occasionally found to be nearly equal 
to the French buhr-stone. 
The coarse porphyroidal granites and gneisses which are scattered over 
so large a part of the State, are however the most common material for 
mill-stones. And in the eastern section, the shell rock is often partly or 
wholly silieified, forming a sort of buhr-stone, as in Georgia, and is well 
adapted to the same uses. In Madison county, in the Huronian slates on 
Laurel River, there is an irregularly laminated whitish quartz, occurring 
in large veins, which is used for millstones, which are reported to be a 
good substitute for buhr-stone. 
Whetstone. Among the silicious argillytes so abundant in the Hu- 
ronian strata, there are frequent beds of novaculite or whetstone. One 
of the best localities is a few miles west of Chapel Hill, from which 
these stones have been carried in all directions. Other quarries are found 
in Person county, near Roxboro, in Anson, not far from Wadesboro, in 
Montgomery and adjoining counties, on the great Huronian belt, and in 
fact almost every section of the State has its own quarries, which either 
do or might supply the local demand, at least in part, and as to articles of 
the commoner grades. 
