Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 27.djvu/545

Rh purposes, but unsuited for any kind of ornamental work, is brought in considerable quantities from Chester County, Pennsylvania. The stone is dull-green in color, soft enough to work readily, and is capable of producing most excellent effects, particularly in rock-faced and rubble work. So far as the writer has observed, however, it has not yet been used to advantage, either alone or in combination with other stone, a majority of the buildings thus far constructed of it being not only failures from an architectural stand-point, but showing a remarkable lack of taste in color combination on the part of their designers. A dull-green building with light, yellowish-gray trimmings can scarcely be considered a success artistically, yet this is the style almost universally adopted. The stone has been used quite extensively in and about Philadelphia, and is the one employed in the construction of the buildings of the University of Pennsylvania and Academy of Natural Sciences in that city. It has also been used to some extent in the cities of New York and Washington, though I have not yet observed it elsewhere.

No marbles are at present quarried in this country similar to the white blue-veined Parmazo marble from the Miseglia quarries, like the red-veined from Levanto, like the yellow from Siena, the red "Griotte" from the French Pyrenees, or the black and gold (Portoro Venere) from the Spezia quarries. A stone somewhat resembling this last has been received at the museum from Helena, Montana, but the quarries are not worked, nor is the extent of the deposit known to the writer. A beautiful bright, flesh-pink marble occurs in abundance in Swain and Cherokee Counties, North Carolina, but is not now in the market, owing to lack of transportation facilities.

Of limestones and dolomites, aside from marbles, large quantities are quarried in the States of New York, Pennsylvania, Indiana, Illinois, Iowa, and Missouri. These are mostly of a dull-grayish, uninteresting color, and their uses are chiefly local. The light-colored oolitic limestone of Bedford, Indiana, is, however, an exception to this rule. Not only is the color pleasing and its lasting qualities fair, but its fine even grain and softness render it admirably adapted for carved work. Several of the Southern and Western States have an abundance of limestone and sandstones suitable for general building purposes, but so far as observed few, if any of them, are of such quality as ever to attain anything more than a local market. Kentucky has limestones in abundance and of good quality. Kansas is pre-eminently a State of limestones. These are, however, for the most part soft and porous, of a dull color, and must be found lacking in lasting qualities in other than a very dry climate. A white, chalky limestone is quarried in Trego County, in this State, and is used in the manufacture of whiting. Otherwise than from the product of this quarry, all the other whiting manufactured in the United States is said to be prepared from imported English chalk. Texas furnishes cretaceous limestones of fine and