MARBLE.
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mineral
was -named in honor of the late patroon, Gen, Stephen Van Rensselaer,
of Albany. This mineral abounds in St. Lawrence county, and will, no
doubt, at no distant day, be wrought into many beautiful ornaments; the
polished specimens in the State Cabinet are very fine.
The
Potomac and breccia marble is a rock of the newer red sandstone series;
it forms a beautiful rock, and the columns of the hall of the House of
Representatives, at Washington, are cut from this somewhat hard
material.
The serpentine marble, or verd-antique, occurs
in numerous localities along the belt of formations which extends from
northern Vermont, through the western part of Massachusetts,
Connecticut, a small portion of southern New York, New Jersey,-
Pennsylvania, and Maryland; this formation is metamorphic of a part of
the Hudson river group. A very beautiful verd-antique marble occurs at
Cavendish, Lowell, and Troy, in Vermont; in Cheshire, Massachusetts,
and in Milford, Connecticut. There are two kinds of verd-antique
marble—the true verd-antique, and the serpentine marble; the first
occurs in Vermont and Milford, Connecticut, and the latter, called the
common, near New Haven, Connecticut.
The
white coarse-grained marble, from Texas, Baltimore county, Maryland, is
quarried very extensively, and used in Washington City for the capitol
extension, treasury, and post-office department.
In
Missouri occur large beds of white and reddish-white marble, in
Jefferson county and near St. Louis; the Genevieve marble, which is an
oolitic limestone, has a very extensive formation, and is used in St.
Louis and New Orleans as building-stone; some marble quarries are full
of organic remains, and some are so hard and durable that they are used
for hearths, having extraordinary power to resist the action of heat.
