Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 27.djvu/550

532 that must not be overlooked, which is the fact that, with our present high rates of labor in this country, many of our finest grades of ornamental stones can not compete in the market with the imported article, even though greatly exceeding them in point of beauty. In the majority of marbles those lines or spots that give to any stone its peculiar attractiveness are in reality flaws, and hence their presence must add greatly to the cost of working. It is safe to say that the beautiful breccia marble from the French Pyrenees, which has been used for wall-panels in the cash-room of the Treasury Building at Washington, would not be worked to any extent from quarries in this country, so long as the imported article can be obtained at present rates. This fact is rendered probable by the cases of the Maryland breccia and the Vermont verd-antique already mentioned. Neither of these is in the market, simply because the imported marble can be furnished at lower prices. With improved machinery and methods of workmanship there seems, however, no doubt but we may in time compete with foreign cheap labor not only in our own markets, but foreign ones as well.



T is not often that the unveiling of a statue is attended with an interest at all comparable with that which characterized this ceremony as performed last Tuesday [June 9th] in the great hall of the Natural History Museum. If the greatness of a man is to be estimated by the measure in which he has influenced the thoughts of men, it is scarcely open to question that the greatest man of our century is Charles Darwin. As Professor Huxley remarked in the course of his singularly judicious and well-balanced address, Mr. Darwin's work has not only reconstructed the science of biology, but has spread with an organizing influence through almost every department of philosophical thought. Yet it was not merely the greatness of the naturalist which invested the proceedings in the Natural History Museum with an interest so unique. It was known to the whole assembly that the man whom they delighted to honor was one whose moral nature had been cast in the same lines of simple grandeur as those which belonged to his intellectual nature. It therefore only needed a passing allusion from Professor Huxley to enable the whole assembly to reflect that it was due as much to massiveness of character as to massiveness of work that within three years of his death Mr. Darwin's name should constitute a new center of gravity in every system of thought. And it was this reflection which gave to the ceremony so unusual a measure of interest. Around the statue were congregated the most representative men 