But the quartz remains untouched, in the form of grains in which it existed in the rocky formation; sometimes, when crushed, it is carried away by the water and deposited. This is the nature of _sand_. Naturally, sometimes other rocky substances which are not changed by water, or only slightly acted on by it, are found in sand; but as these latter are more or less changed by the continuous action of water, it is not unusual to find sand which consists almost entirely of pure quartz. Common sand is generally coloured yellow or reddish-brown by foreign mineral matter, consisting principally of ferruginous minerals and clays. The purest or so-called quartz sand is, however, rarely found, and is recognised by the absence of colour, and also by the test that when shaken in water it does not form any turbidity: this shows the absence of clay; when fused with bases it forms a colourless glass, and on this account is a valuable material for the manufacture of glass. Sands were formed at all periods of the earth's existence; the ancient ones, compressed by strata of more recent formation and permeated with various substances (deposited from the infiltrating water), are sometimes solidified into rock, called _sandstone_, composing, in some places, whole mountain chains, and serviceable as a most excellent building material, on account of the slight change it undergoes under the influence of atmospheric agencies, and on account of the facility with which it may be wrought from rocky formations into immense regularly-shaped flags--the latter property is due to the primary laminar structure of the sand formations deposited, as above-mentioned, by water. Many grindstones and whetstones are made from such rocks. [12] Two modifications of rock crystal are known. They are very easily distinguished from each other by their relation to polarised light; one rotates the plane of polarisation to the right and the other to the left--in the one the hemihedral faces are right and in the other they are left; this opposite rotatory power is taken advantage of in the construction of polarisers. But, with this physical difference--which is naturally dependent on a certain difference in the distribution of the molecules--there is not only no observable difference in the chemical properties, but not even in the density of the mass. Perfectly pure rock crystal is a substance which is most invariable with respect to its specific gravity. The numerous and accurate determinations made by Steinheil on the specific gravity of rock crystal show that (if the crystal be free from flaws) it is very constant and is equal to 2·66.