ECONOMIC FEATURES. 67 
ADAPTABILITY TO DIFFERENT USES. 
The successful use of granite depends upon a careful consideration 
of its various adaptabilities. The granites proper, as will be seen 
by the description of the Maine granites alone ( pp. 73, 74), include 
stones which vary greatly in texture, color, and shade. The coarse- 
textured ones are best adapted to massive structures, while the fine- 
textured ones are better adapted to lighter structures, monuments, 
and statues. The reason for this is that in coarse-textured granites 
the Jarge feldspars crossing the various sculptural designs at all sorts 
of angles produce lines and reflections that interfere with the lights 
and shades' produced by the sculptor's design, and thus mar their 
effect. The fine granites are well adapted to light structures and to 
fine sculpture, as is shown in the delicately carved panel and the 
statue represented in PL XIV, A and B. Some coarse granites, how- 
ever, lend themselves well to coarse carvings, especially when these 
are to be placed in the higher parts of buildings, as was the lintel of 
Vinalhaven granite shown in PL XIII, A. Then there is the matter 
of color and shade. There is large room for the exercise of artistic 
taste in deciding which colors and shade will best harmonize or con- 
trast with one another in a granite structure or with the colors of 
other stones or materials in a composite structure. There is also 
room for choice between different granites in ornamental work, 
because of the different amount of contrast between the polished, 
hammered, and rough surfaces of stones of different color and texture, 
although the polished surface is always darkest and the hammered 
lightest. Tarr° in 1895 wrote of a demand by architects for rust- 
colored granite (sap) for use in connection with light-colored stone 
in order to produce pleasing contrasts. (See further p. 72.) 
The black granites are obviously best adapted for inscriptions 
where legibility at a distance is the prime object, and also for all 
ornamental work in which more marked contrasts are desired than 
the ordinary granite can furnish. The black granites are sometimes 
combined with ordinary granite of light shade in monumental work, 
the die being of black granite. 
GRANITE QUARRYING. 
The problems that confront the granite quarry man are numerous. 
Their solution requires not only capital, but practical experience, 
judgment, a little geological knowledge, and some mathematics. It 
is, first of all, assumed that suitably prepared specimens of the fresh 
rock have been procured and subjected by competent persons, pro- 
vided with the necessary machines and instruments, to the tests 
" Economic geology of the United States, p. 363. 
