A Treatise on the Building and Ornamental Stones of Great Britain and Foreign Countries: Arranged According to Their Geological Distribution and Mineral Character, with Illustrations of Their Application in Ancient and Modern Structures

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Macmillan and Company, 1872 - Building stones - 333 pages
 

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Page 236 - It has also been traced from Egypt, where it was largely quarried of old for the building of the Pyramids, into Asia Minor, and across Persia by Bagdad to the mouths of the Indus. It...
Page i - Building and Ornamental Stones of Great Britain and Foreign Countries ; arranged according to their geological distribution and mineral character, with illustrations of their application in ancient and modern structures.
Page 150 - The color is that of amber, or rich yellowish brown, of varions shades arranged in folds or wavy parallel bands; sometimes it is beautifully iridescent. The mammillated structure so characteristic of deposits due to filtration or percolation is also not infrequent. This stone was largely employed by the ancient inhabitants of Egypt in the formation of canopi (or jars surmounted by sculptured images of the dog-headed god), in which were deposited the ashes of the dead. Besides these smaller objects,...
Page 30 - Ansted* states that granite generally contains about 0.8 per cent of water and is capable of absorbing about 0.2 per cent more. In other words, a cubic yard of granite weighing 2 tons contains in its ordinary state about...
Page 203 - Daniell, who has stated to us that from the results of experiments, he is of opinion ' the nearer the magnesian limestones approach to equivalent proportions of carbonate of lime and carbonate of magnesia, the more crystalline and better they are in every respect.* 1 657.
Page 37 - Cheesewring granite has been used in the London Docks, Westminster Bridge, the Thames Embankment, Rochester Bridge, the docks at Copenhagen, the Great Basses Lighthouse near the island of Ceylon, and for the tomb of the Duke of Wellington in the crypt of St. Paul's Cathedral. These quarries produc.e from 8,000 to 10,000 tons of stone per annum, and about a similar quantity is annually shipped from the quarries near Par.
Page 179 - ... valuable stones are from India. Some of the pieces of sardonyx used by the ancient engravers for their most important works were of enormous dimensions. At the present day onyxes and sardonyxes are imported from Germany, but their colours are produced, artificially by boiling the stone, a kind of flint, for several days in honey and water, and then soaking it in sulphuric acid to bring out the black and white, and in nitric to give the red and white layers. They are, however, considered of little...
Page 137 - ... and yet so hard as never to betray the touch or moulder away beneath the steel; and so admirably crystallized, and of such permanent elements, that no rains dissolve it, no time changes it, no atmosphere decomposes it; once shaped, it is shaped for ever, unless subjected to actual violence or attrition.
Page 282 - From the manner in which the buildings and monuments of Italy, formed of calcareous materials, have retained to a wonderful degree the sharpness of their orginal sculpturing, unless disfigured hy the hand" of man, it is clear that a dry and smokeless atmosphere is the essential element of durability. In this respect, therefore, the humid sky and gaseous atmosphere of British towns must always place the buildings of this...
Page 293 - The Welsh Slate Company, whose quarries are at Festiniog, in Merionethshire, sent several slabs averaging 14 feet by 7 or 8 feet. All the slate from this neighbourhood possesses the remarkable quality of splitting with great facility, and with wonderful accuracy of surface, into thin lamina: or sheets. Some of these thinly divided sheets are obtained 5 to 10 feet long from 6 to 12 inches wide, and not more than the sixteenth of an inch in thickness. They are so clastic as to bend like a veneer of...

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