Page:Transactions of the Geological Society, 1st series, vol. 3.djvu/109



The following varieties are the most remarkable of those which are to be seen in this tract.

1. Pure white marble, the fracture intermediate between the granular and small platy.

2. The same with a scarcely discernible shade of gray.

3. The same with variously disposed veins of grey and black, resembling the common veined marble used in architectural ornaments.

4. The same with narrower veins well defined, and often reticulated with a great semblance of regularity: very ornamental.

5. The same, distinguished, independently of the veins, by a parallel and regular alternation of layers of pure white and grayish white.

6. White marble variously mottled and veined with gray, yellow, purple, and light green. This is also s very ornamental variety.

7. Marble, exhibiting various mixtures of white, pink, purple, light green, dark green, and black, of a rich sombre effect, and highly ornamental.

8. White marble, beautifully mottled and veined by yellow transparent serpentine.

The ornamental coloured marbles here described, scarcely yield in beauty to many of the similarly constituted specimens of ancient marbles, and like many of the marbles of Scotland they will be found to owe their colours to serpentine. This is also the case in Glen Tilt, at Balahulish, and in Iona. But the most obviously valuable variety is the white, which seems to possess most of the qualities requisite for the purposes of statuary.

Few substances in the catalogue of those with which economical mineralogy is concerned have excited more interest than statuary