Freestone

“ For this purpose, I examined the rocks lying along the shore nearest adjoining the Inch Cape Rock, but found none of a very durable quality; most of it is a red freestone, softer than the rock itself, which has been much worn away by the wash of the sea, and therefore by no means fit for the exterior work of such a building; and there does not appear to be any fit for that purpose nearer than Kingoodie, about three or four miles from Dundee. This stone is a hard millstone-grit, of an excellent quality; very hard to work, but can be raised in blocks of any size and thickness required. ”

“ A highly polished material, such as granite or marble, does not go well with freestone, owing to the violent contrast between the polished and dull surfaces; also, any highly polished surface reflects light in such a way that to the sight the form is often altered. ”

“ But the whole exterior of the building, except here and there a buttress, and one old patch of gray stones, seems to have been renewed within a very few years with red freestone; and, really, I think it is all the more beautiful for being new,—the ornamental parts being so sharply cut, and the stone, moreover, showing various shadings, which will disappear when it gets weatherworn. There is a very large and fine east window, of recent construction, wrought with delicate stone tracery. The door of the south transept stood open, though barred by an iron grate. ”

“ When the building stone of which the houses are constructed is quarried, it is so soft that it can be easily moulded, or rather carved, into almost any desired shape, but exposure to the atmosphere hardens it gradually to the consistency of our American freestone. ”

“ They are always perpendicular in the strata of calcinable matters, as chalk, marle, marble, &c. but are more oblique and irregularly placed in vitrifiable substances, brown freestone, and rocks of flint, where they are frequently adorned with [49] chrystals, and other minerals. In quarries of marble or calcinable stone, the divisions are filled with spar, gypsum, gravel, and an earthy sand, which contains a great quantity of chalk. ”

“ A few of the early settlers used freestone or sienite, or a native porphyritic green stone called beech-bowlder. Sandstone was rarely employed, for though easily carved, it as easily yielded to New England frosts and storms. A hard, dark, flinty slate-stone from North Wales was commonly used, a stone so hard and so enduring that when our modern granite and marble monuments are crumbled in the dust I believe these old slate headstones still will speak their warning words of many centuries. ”

“ Sandstone thickly studded with quartz and a little freestone, are the only varieties which they offer; a circumstance the more singular, as the moment you descend into the low country beyond them, granite is the only sort of stone that is to be met with for upwards of two hundred miles. ”

“ Then came the medial order, or carboniferous rocks of old red sandstone, mountain limestone, and all the parallel strata of coal, slate-clay, and freestone, which he calls coal measures. He shewed us abundant remains in them of animals, but very few of which have any resemblance to existing species. Some of the limestone or marble specimens were polished on one side, so as to shew their beautiful veins and colours. ”

“ Fine white freestone abounds in the immediate vicinity (as at Craigleith, from the vast quarry of which, now passing into disuse, the stone for much of the New Town was obtained) and furnishes excellent building material; while the hard trap rock, with which the stratified sandstones of the Coal formation have been extensively broken up and overlaid, supplies good materials for paving and road-making. On this account quarrying is another industry which is seldom dormant. ”

“ It appears insincere at first to a Northern builder, because, accustomed to build with solid blocks of freestone, he is in the habit of supposing the external superficies of a piece of masonry to be some criterion of its thickness. ”

“ The black rock has given place to a very soft sandstone, which seems to be washed away fast by the river, and being thrown into the river renders its navigation more difficult than it was yesterday: above this sandstone, and towards the summits of the hills, a hard freestone of a yellowish brown colour shows itself in several stratas of unequal thickness, frequently overlaid or incrusted by a thin stratum of limestone, which seems to be formed of concreted shells. ”

“ The houses are divided from the hill by a vein of stiff clay (good wheat-land) , yet stand on a rock of white stone, little in appearance removed from chalk; but seems so far from being calcareous, that it endures extreme heat. Yet that the freestone still preserves somewhat that is analogous to chalk, is plain from the beeches which descend as low as those rocks extend, and no farther, and thrive as well on them, where the ground is steep, as on the chalks. ”

“ A sandstone in which the grains are cemented by carbonate of lime is said to be calcareous. Freestone is a sandstone which can be worked freely in any direction. In most sandstones, the lines of bedding are distinct; when they are so numerous as to render the rock fissile, the sandstone is said to be shaly.
Shale is a more or less indurated fissile or laminated [Pg 19] clay. When the rock becomes coarse by the admixture of sand, it gradually passes into a shaly sandstone. There are many other varieties of clay-rocks—such as fire-clay, pipe-clay, marl, loam, &c.—which are sufficiently familiar. ”

“ The gentleman has compounded a cement or mortar, which, by the mere action of the air, assumes in a week or two the durability and consistence of the hardest marble and the firmest stone, and may be applied to all the purposes to which the strongest grained freestone is usually applied. Bridges, aqueducts, houses, and we suppose pavements and roads, can be as well constructed of this material as of the ordinary matters used in their composition. ”

“ Limestone, freestone and whinstone are all quarried. Binny freestone was used for the Royal Institution and the National Gallery in Edinburgh, and many important buildings in Glasgow. Some fishing is carried on from Queensferry, and Bo’ness is the principal port. ”

“ At Compton Basset is a quarrie of soft white stone betwixt chalke and freestone: it endures fire admirably well, and would be good for reverbatory furnaces: it is much used for ovens and hearth-stones: it is as white as chalke. At my Lord Stowell's house at Aubury is a chimney piece carved of it in figures; but it doth not endure the weather, and therefore it ought not to be exposed to sun and raine.
At Yatton Keynel, in Longdean, is a freestone quarrie, but it doth not endure the weather well.
In Alderton-field is a freestone quarrie, discovered a little before the civill-warres broke forth. ”

“ This range-work facing, which presents in its way an attractive appearance, and whose rusticity contrasts with the smooth finish of the dressed stone, is backed with ordinary rubble walling. Thus, in districts where stone occurs naturally of this shape in the quarries, we get an economical building material. But it is puerile to amuse one’s self with making thin coursed-work where soft freestone abounds, and where it must be cut into little bits to obtain this appearance. ”

“ The Pea Grit series contains pisolitic limestone and coarse, iron-stained oolite and sandy limestone. The freestones are compact oolite limestones. The rag stones are fossiliferous, earthy and iron-stained oolitic limestones. The “grits” are really coarse-grained limestones or calciferous sandstones. Between Andoversford and Bourton-in-the-Water the Inferior Oolite is represented by rag stones (Ferruginous beds, Clypeus Grit, Trigonia bed, Notgrove Freestone, Gryphite Grit) and freestones (Upper Freestones and Harford Sands, Oolite Marl, Lower Freestone) . ”

“ It forms the greater part of all low hills and uplands throughout the world, and supplies the most valuable materials for building and sculpture, being distinguished from the group of the slaty coherents by its incapability of being separated into thin sheets. All the rocks belonging to the group break irregularly, like loaf sugar or dried clay. Some of them are composed of hardened calcareous matter, and are known as limestone; others are merely hardened sand, and are called freestone or sandstone ”

“ The limestone is not only abundant and good, but from the position of the rocks it can be obtained at small expense in working. Freestone and slates are quarried in considerable quantities. The soil in the more level portions of the county is fertile where it rests on limestone, and there is also a mixed soil of deep clay, which is capable of high cultivation; but in the hilly regions a strong retentive clay prevails, which could be made productive only by careful draining and culture. ”

“ Thus at Hely field the freestones are 7 fathoms thick, the most considerable of the grits at Shieldon about 11 fathoms, the great hazle at Dufton 10 fathoms, and three of the freestones in the section below that of Dufton 18, 26, and 30 fathoms respectively.
The limestone beds are the most characteristic of this formation, and are the most important to the miner. Of these there are 21 beds in the preceding sections of which the aggregate thickness is about 96 fathoms, that of the whole series being, as I have already mentioned, about 458 fathoms. ”

“ In examining the surface of the earth, a person would at first imagine that the confused variety of mineral substances he saw, was the result of mere chance; but if in different places he should find the same substances constantly linked together—if, for instance, in traversing the different coal districts, he were to find sand, clay,{199} chalk, freestone, coal, limestone, sandstone, slate, and granite, succeed each other with tolerable uniformity, he would soon perceive that there was something like system in their arrangement. ”

“ Then we discovered that he actually could not distinguish between iron pyrites and auriferous quartz. He was not a metallurgist at all. He was a masquerader. Then the bone-ash in the tub was mixed with fragments of calcined bone, and the cupels all showed similar fragments. In one of them I could see part of the crown of a tooth. That was pure luck. But observe that by that time I had enough evidence to justify an arrest. The tooth served only to bring the affair to a crisis ”

“ I do not care what Lord & Lovejoy say; I do not care what anybody on earth says; I do not care now; I shall never care. I do not care whether this green stone in this ring is an emerald or not. It does not concern me. All that concerns me is Jim. All the world and all the precious stones in the world can never make any difference with me. I do not know anything about this green stone. I do not know how it got in the ring. Understand, mother; understand, Uncle Stephen, I do not care. You are never to speak to me of this again.”
“But, Ruth, you — must believe —” Ann began, faintly. ”

“ In that body there is more of the stone than of iron; and therefore the iron, that it may not be subdued by the stone, desires the force and company of iron; that being not able to resist alone, it may be able by more help to defend itself.... The Loadstone draws not stones, because it wants them not, for there is stone enough in the body of it; and if one Loadstone draw another, it is not for the stone, but for the iron that is in it." As if in the loadstone the iron were a distinct body and not mixed up as the other metals in their ores! ”

“ I had the setting enlarged. I wore the ring. I never spoke. The child came. My husband died. I waited a little while; then I went to the same jeweler, and old man with whom my own father used to deal. He took this poor green stone out of the setting, and I wore the setting without it. People wondered, but I did not care. The setting at least was good, even wonderful. People thought I had lost the stone. Then Jim became engaged to Ruth. I wanted to prove the girl. I wanted my son to have a better than his poor father had. Loyalty is worth more than any gem on earth. ”

“ He said that they declared it was the finest emerald that had ever come into their possession.”
Stephen Ward looked grim. “I will make it my business to see these gentlemen to-morrow,” said he. “I will take the ring in and ask a few questions.”
“Stephen, Ruth will suspect.”
“She will have to know finally, I fear, in simple justice to her and her future life. But she will not suspect to-morrow. The stone is a little loose in the setting. Queer work that is for a firm like Lord & Lovejoy.” ”

“ Your needle, dear Annie, has never been touched by the wonderful stone! You must know that some few hundred years ago, people discovered that a mineral called the loadstone, found in iron mines, had the quality of always pointing to the North, and they found, too, that any iron rubbed with it would possess the same quality. The needle Tom tells us of has undergone this operation. Before the invention of the compass, it was only by watching the stars that sailors could direct their course by night. ”

“ Some of them made limited use of raw metals and minerals, believing them to be only peculiar kinds of stone, never dreaming that they could be melted and refined and cast into implements and ornaments. Stone and Flint were the “metals” of the Mound-builders and other primitive peoples, while bone, shell, clay, wood and fibers were also much used. If peoples of the Stone Age had not made their humble beginnings, we would not be today living in the Age of Iron and enjoying the conveniences of civilization. ”