Excerpt from History and Uses of Limestones and Marbles Marbles rank next to precious stones for beauty and ele gance in decoration, but, unlike them, they are very abundant and, of an almost unlimited variety. Under the general term of marble, are often classed other stones used for artistic pur poses, which for beauty, diversity of colors, and fine polish are suitable for decoration such as alabaster, aragonite, gyp, sum (all calcareous), serpentine, porphyry, labradorite, basalt, and some others, whose constituents are essentially different. All marbles, properly speaking, are limestones admitting a polish, whether crystalline or uncrystalline. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.