PYRAiMIDS OF DJIZA. 181 
are of soft limestone; a little harder, and more chap. 
IV. 
compact, than what some of our English masons ^ _. ^-' > 
vulgarly call chinch ; whereof King's College 
Chapel at Cambridge, and great part of Ely 
Cathedral, is built. It is of a greyish white 
colour ; and has this remarkable property, that, 
when broken by a smart blow with a hammer, 
it exhales the fetid odour common to the dark 
limestone of the Dead Sea, and of many other 
places ; owing to the disengagement of a gaseous 
sulphureted hydrogen. This character is very 
uncommon in white limestone, although it may 
be frequently observed in the darker varieties. 
It is now very generally admitted, that the 
stones, of which the Pyramids consist, are of 
the same nature as the calcareous rock whereon 
they stand, and that this was cut away in order 
to form them : Herodotus says they were brought 
from the Arabian side of the 7Vi/e^ Another 
more compact variety of limestone is found in 
detached masses at the base of these structures, 
exactly as it is described by Strabo ; seeming to 
consist entirely of mineralized exuvicE, derived 
from some animal now unknown. We did not 
observe this variety among the constituents of 
the Pyramids themselves, but in loose fragments 
(2) Euterpe, c. 8. 
