Page:Transactions of the Geological Society, 1st series, vol. 3.djvu/110

 marble, from its rarity, its beauty, and its indispensable necessity in the art of sculpture. It has at different times formed an object of anxious research in this country, and premiums have been held out for it by the Society of Arts. It has consequently been found in various parts of Scotland, as well as in Ireland, but no native specimens have yet been introduced into the arts. As the causes which have impeded their introduction have hitherto been such as may be considered adventitious, being of a commercial nature and not founded on any experience of their physical defects, it has been hoped that they might by perseverance and time be removed, and that the statuary marbles of this country might at some future day supersede the necessity of importing this article. It will not therefore be a misplaced inquiry to examine the several properties of those marbles which have at different times held a place in the estimation of artists, and to compare them with our own specimens, more particularly with that of Sky now under review, the most abundant and certainly the most specious of all those which have yet been found in Britain. The inquiry is the more necessary, as the Several circumstances in which white marbles differ, do not appear to have been generally attended to, and as an undue value seems in some instances to have been fixed on our own in popular estimation, although not in that of sculptors themselves.

The value of this substance in those distant periods when the arts of Greece flourished, occasioned an industrious research after a material in which the sublime ideas of its artists could be embodied, Accordingly many quarries have been wrought in ancient times, of which little has descended to us but the names, and a few of the works which were executed from their produce. These marbles were of various qualities, and examples of them are still to be seen in ancient statues, although with regard to many of them, a species of