PRACTICAL PAPERS—ARTIFICIAL STONE. 
871 
ings at Calcutta, besides a great amount of decorative work for English ar¬ 
chitects. We understand that some thousands of Corinthian capitals of this 
stone are specified for the new St. Thomas’s Hospital, and the architects of 
the Grand Hotel of New York have decided to employ it for all the decorative 
work of the grand court of that edifice.* 
“While, however, the new stone affords every facility for ornamental 
moulding, we consider that its more important purpose is as a substitute for 
ordinary cut building stone, and for that employed in pilasters, window dress¬ 
ings, garden balustrades, etc. It is truly the stone of the million, as well as 
for the million, and ought to take the place of stucco for exterior work in 
our own town houses. We have not heard that the workmen ha^e set their 
faces against it, althougli an intimation of this, sort wonld not surprise us, 
but we should suppose that a proper knowledge of its advantages would in¬ 
sure its general adoption in spite of any possible opposition of this kind. 
We believe it to be the fact that builders are slow to move, but there are al¬ 
ways exceptions, and, as in other trades, great improvements like this will 
make way against all opposition. 
“Oa the visit to the new works above spoken of, Mr. Dimes made an ex¬ 
periment upon two cubes of the new stone, each four inches square, and made 
only ten days before. One took forty-four and the other forty-eight tons to 
crush it, ■while a like cube of Bath stone gave way at fourteen tons. -Mr* 
John Grant, the assistant engineer to Mr. Bazalgette, of the Metropolitan 
Board of Works, also made experiments on the same occasion, on the tensile 
strength of the stone. Specimens having a sectional area of two and a quarter 
inches bore, respectively, eight hundred and seventy pounds and tA elve hun* 
dred pounds. These specimens had been made but five days previously. 
“The new works of the Patent Concrete Stone Company have been laid 
out upon a large scale and admit of easy extension. They are already en* 
gaged upon a large amount and a remarkable variety of w'ork, and it cannot 
be doubted that the excellence and great cheapness of their manufacture, the 
former now proved by nearly every test known to engineers, architects* 
chemists, and builders, will rapidly secure for it a vastly wider introduction 
than it has yet attained.” 
Besides the important applications of the Eaosome process 
to the manufacture of building stone, and to the production 
of the works of art, it has furnished a very valuable aid to 
mechanical industrj^, by providing the best material yet known 
for the manufacture of grindstones. The extreme hardness of 
the silicious cement which binds together the grains which 
compose this material, secures it from the rapid disintegration 
which takes place when steel tools are ground on the best grind¬ 
stones formed from natural rock. The following interesting 
♦This project has been abandoned, hut the fact mentioned shows that the invealioa of 
Mr. Ransome is appreciated so far as it has become known in our coontry. 
