226 GRANITE OF INGRIA. GNEISS. 
were. Columns and obelisks of any size and height 
might be cut from it : for the rock is one uniform mass, 
without appearance of strata, division, or fissure of any 
kind. A convincing proof has been given of the strength 
and hardness of this granite, in a fragment of several tons* 
weight, which fell from nearly the top of a precipice 
five hundred yards in height, upon a hard and solid rock 
below, and yet continued entire. 
253. GRANITE OF INGRIA. A beautiful red granite 
is found in some parts of Russia, remarkable on account 
of the felspar (110) that it contains, appearing in round 
or oval pieces, from half an inch to two inches in dia- 
meter. This granite, when polished, exhibits shining 
spots of round or oval shape, which give to it somewhat 
the appearance of being studded with precious stones. 
The royal summer garden at Petersburg is decorated 
with a superb colonnade of Ingrian granite. The co- 
lumns are sixty in number, and each of a single piece 
twenty feet high, and three feet in diameter. Many of 
the public buildings in Petersburg are of this granite. 
An immense block of it thirty-two feet long, twenty- 
one feet broad, and seventeen feet high, forms the pe- 
destal of the celebrated equestrian statue of Peter the 
Great, in that city. 
254. GRAPHIC GRANITE. A singular kind of gra- 
nite has been discovered in the island of Corsica, and 
lately near Portsoy in the north of Scotland. The 
ground of this granite is a whitish or reddish yellow 
felspar, in which are embedded crystals of quartz each 
from an inch to an inch and half long, and several lines 
in diameter. The name of graphic granite was given 
to it in consequence of an imaginary resemblance which 
the sections of these crystals have to Hebrew, or Ara- 
bic, and sometimes to musical characters. 
255. GNEISS is a primitive rock, consisting, like granite, 
of felspar (110), quartz (?6), and mica (123), but differing 
jrom that rock in its structure, being slaty. 
