870 
STATE AGRICULTURAL SOCIETY. 
throughout. In other words, on the instant of contact, the silicate of soda 
and the chloride of calcium mutually decompose each other and reunite as 
silicate of lime and chloride of sodium, the former practically indistructible 
in air, the latter, common salt, perfectly deliquescent and removable by 
washing, although the stone, after the washing, is impermeable to water. 
Plaster of Paris does not set quicker than silicate of soda and chloride of 
calcium. 
“The chloric solution is first ladled upon the moulded sand, and the hard¬ 
ening going on, the objects are afterwards immersed in the solution itself, 
wherein large pieces are left for several hours, the solution being boiled in 
open tanks by steam led through it in pipes. This expels any air which 
may have lodged in the stone, and possibly heightens the energy of union 
with the silicate. 
“ After this the stone is placed, for a longer or shorter time, according to 
the size of the object, under a shower bath of cold water. This is not, by 
bathing, to convert it, into Bath stone, although were the Bath stone a sand 
stone instead of an oolitic formation, this name would do as well as any. The 
salt, or clloride of sodium, deposited throughout the^ interstices, is sought 
out and washed away, in brine, by the water, and were it not that a portion 
of undecomposed chloride of calcium is also washed out, this brine might be 
profitably evaporated for common salt. Now this searching out of the salt 
by the wate'r would appear to prove that the stone was perfectly permeable, 
but, by one of those parodoxes with which chemistry abounds, the stone, when 
once freed from the salt, is almost impermeable. The action is one which, if 
it can be explained at all, can only be explained as to one of the phenomena 
% 
of dialysis, as experimentally investigated by Professor Graham. There is 
no doubt whatever that salt has been deposited everywhere throughout the 
stone, no doubt that it is afterwards completely washed out, and yet the stone 
as eflPectually resists the passage of water afterwards as if it were granite or 
marble. 
“It is not necessary to describe the variety of objects that may be made in 
the new stone. It is practically a fictile manufacture, although not indurated 
by fire, and, unlike fictile goods, having no shrinkage or alteration of color 
in the making. Whatever the required size of the finished stone, it is mould¬ 
ed exactly to that size, with no allowance as in moulding fire-clay goods or 
in patern-making for castings in iron. The heaviest blocks for works of sta¬ 
bility, and the most elaborately ornamental capitals, tracery, or copies of 
statuary may be made with almost equal facility. For any purpose for which 
natural stone has ever been used for construction or architectural ornament, 
the artificial stone will fitly take its place. Mr. Fowler has used it extensive¬ 
ly inthestationsof the Metropolitan railway; Messrs. Lucas Brothers have used 
it with success in various works; several manufacturers at Ipswich and else¬ 
where have the bed-stones of their steam engines, steam hammers, oil mills, 
etc., formed of the new stone. Mr. Ransome has moulded a large number of 
Ionic capitals for the New Zealand post oflhce, and still more richly embellished 
capitals, modelled from those of the Erectheum at Athens, for public build- 
