Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 27.djvu/549

Rh many counterfeits, however, the work is too perfect in execution, and need deceive none but the most inexperienced.

Concerning the future of the building stone industry little that is definite can be said. As the population increases and becomes more fixed in its abode, there naturally arises a demand for a more durable building material than wood, which is still largely used in the country towns and smaller cities. As wealth accumulates, too, better and more substantial buildings are erected, which are often profusely embellished with the finer grades of ornamental stones. The demand, then, is sure to increase. In regard to the amount of the supply there can be question; everything would seem to depend on the quality, variety, and cost of working of yet-to-be-discovered material. Are we to continue to import as now the finer grades of our ornamental stones, or will our own quarries, yet perhaps to be opened, produce enough and more than enough for our own use? I am inclined to think the latter.

In many of the Eastern and earliest to be settled States very little is yet known regarding their final resources. In Maine, for instance, fully one half of the State is as yet an unknown land. Its present quarries are nearly all immediately upon the coast. What are the resources of its immense interior can not with certainty be foretold. In the Southern and Western States and Territories, this condition of affairs is naturally greatly magnified. The Virginias, North and South Carolina, and Georgia, all contain excellent material, none of which is now in our principal markets. Michigan can furnish brown sandstones in great abundance fully equal to any now quarried in the more Eastern States, and other sandstones of a beautiful mellow tint are known to occur in Western Arizona. The Rocky Mountain region contains an abundance, both in variety and quantity, of granites, sandstones, marbles, and the more recent volcanic rocks, as basalts, rhyolites, and trachytes. Some of these are very beautiful, excelling anything in this respect from the Eastern States. Red granites far excelling the red Scottish granites of Peterhead, or the celebrated Egyptian "Syenite," occur in inexhaustible quantities. We have seen a black-and-white breccia marble from Pitkin, Colorado, which bids fair to be a formidable rival of the imported Portoro marble from the Monte d'Arma quarries, if it occurs in sufficient quantities and is accessible. A fine field for exploration is offered in the extensive stalagmitic deposits on the floors of the numerous caverns so prevalent in many parts of the country. These deposits, as is well known, are identical in composition with the celebrated "onyx" marbles of California, Mexico, and Egypt, already mentioned. The red and purple porphyries so abundant in New Hampshire, Eastern Massachusetts, and other parts of the country, offer an unfailing supply of beautiful and durable ornamental stones, but which are at present kept out of the market, owing to the great cost of working.

This leads us, in conclusion, to an important item in this connection