Slate of excellent quality exists in Vermont in three extensive ranges, one in the eastern part of the State, another in the central, and another in the western. Each is quarried to some extent at several points, but the last named most extensively in Rutland County. Slabs taken from the weathered surface rock were long ago used for tombstones, and may be seen among the sumacs and goldenrods of many an old graveyard, still commemorating the spiritual and physical excellences of the pioneers who sleep beneath them. No quarries were opened until 1845, nor was much progress made for five years thereafter, when an immigration of intelligent Welshmen brought skilled hands to develop the new industry, and made St. David a popular saint in the shadow of the Taconic hills. The existence of marble in Vermont was known long ago. On the Isle La Motte, a quarry of black marble was worked before the Revolution; and early in the present century, quarries were opened in West Rutland, and worked in rude and primitive fashion, the slabs so obtained being mostly used for headstones. A quarry was opened in Middlebury, and it is claimed that the device of sawing marble with sand and a toothless strip of iron was invented by a boy of that town, named Isaac Markham, though in fact it was known to the ancients and used by them centuries ago. But little more than fifty years ago, the site of the great quarries of West Rutland was a barren sheep-pasture, shaggy with stunted evergreens, and the wealth it roofed was undreamed of, and so cheaply valued that the whole tract was exchanged for an old horse worth less than one of the huge blocks of marble that day after day are hoisted from its depths. The working of these quarries was begun about 1836, and within ten years thereafter three companies were formed and in operation. But the growth of the business was slow, for there were no railroads, and all the marble quarried had to be hauled by teams twenty-five miles to Whitehall, the nearest shipping-point. Furthermore, its introduction to general use was difficult, for though its purity of color and firmness could not be denied, its durability was doubted. Fifty years of exposure in our variable and destructive climate have proved Vermont marble to exceed in this quality that of any foreign country. In 1852 a line of railroad running near at hand was completed, and the marble business of Rutland began to assume something of the proportions which now distinguish it as the most important of the kind on the continent. One of the most remarkable changes in the commerce of Vermont has been in the lumber trade, which no longer flows with the current of Champlain and the Richelieu to Canada, but from the still immense forests of the Dominion up these waterways to supply the demands of a region long since shorn of its choicest timber. Of this great trade Burlington is the centre, and one of the busiest lumber marts in New England.