Scientific American Supplement, No. 360, November 25, 1882Various
Science
Scientific American Supplement, No. 360, November 25, 1882
Various
Science -- Periodicals
In some parts of the country, where neither granite nor sandstone
is easily procured, blue and gray limestone are sometimes used for
building, and, when hammer dressed, often look like granite. A serious
objection to their use, however, is the occasional presence of iron,
which rusts on exposure, and defaces the building. In Western New York
they are widely used. Topeka stone, like the coquine of Florida and
Bermuda, is soft like wood when first quarried, and easily wrought,
but it hardens on exposure. The limestones of Canton, Mo., Joliet and
Athens, Ill., Dayton, Sandusky, Marblehead, and other points in Ohio,
Ellittsville, Ind., and Louisville and Bowling Green, Ky., are great
favorites west. In many of these regions limestone is extensively used
for macadamizing roads, for which it is excellently adapted. It also
yields excellent slabs or flags for sidewalks.
One of the principal uses of this variety of stone is its conversion, by
burning, into lime for building purposes. All limestones are by no
means equally excellent in this regard. Thomaston lime, burned with
Pennsylvania coal, near the Penobscot River, has had a wide reputation
for nearly half a century. It has been shipped thence to all points
along the Atlantic coast, invading Virginia as far as Lynchburg, and
going even to New Orleans, Smithfield, R.I., and Westchester County,
N.Y., near the lower end of the Highlands, also make a particularly
excellent quality of lime. Kingston, in Ulster County, makes an inferior
sort for agricultural purposes. The Ohio and other western stones yield
a poor lime, and that section is almost entirely dependent on the east
for supplies.
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