RICH MARBLE QUARRIES

Taranaki Daily News, 8 October 1929, Page 15

RICH MARBLE QUARRIES

WORKED FOR 2000 YEARS. SOME OF WORLD'S SUPPLY’. Italy is said to possess the world’s finest, richest, and most varied marble quarries, quarries worked for more than. 2000 years and still inexhaustible, while the southern section of the peninsula is rich in veins of beautiful coloured marbles so far commercially exploited to a small extent (writes the Rome correspondent of the Christian Science Monitor). Italy is also unusually rich in. quarries of valuable and choice building stones, and has large deposits of such valuable volcanic products as pozzalana and pumice stone. The output of marble, defined as stone susceptible of a high polish and suited to the needs of sculptors, architects and decorators, last year amounted to more than half a million metric tons. The most important quarries for white marble are the world-famed formations of Messa Carrara in Tuscany. They lie in the Apuan Alps and in the upper valley of the Serchio, while the generic jianie of Carrara marble is given to that coming from the quarries of Carrara, Messa, Versilia and Garfagnana. The celebrated Luni marbles of antiquity came from the Carrara quarries, whence they were shipped to Rome from the neighbouring port of .Luni. It was from these quarries that the great blocks forming Trajan’s came and from which the Apbllo Belvedere ; was chiselled. < . The qualities which have made these marbles, famous are their fine grain which lends admirably to the sculptor’s chisel, the high polish of which they are capable, their smooth textures equal to that of the Parian marble of the Greeks, and the warm, creamy shades that make them so highly prized by sculptors.. The chemical composition of the Apuan marbles is exceptionally free from impurities. Examined under the microscope all'these specimens reveal an identical structure, consisting of polysynthetic calcite crystals oriented in all directions. Apuan or Carrara marbles are classified for commercial purposes in statuary marbles, in which crystallisation is very marked, and ordinary white marbles. The statuary marbles subdivide into two main classes; white, tending to cream in the choicer specimens, especially adapted for statuary; and bluish white marbles, veined but free from spots, highly suited for decorative work. The ordinary white marbles subdivide into the so-called paonazzo, of a creamish colour with green and yellow markings, a handsome marble for decorative purposes; cipollino, with greenish markings similar to those found in the Greek marble of that name; arabescato, so called because of its extensive network of veinirigs, largely to Germany and used for the tops of washing tables, for bathrooms, etc.; calacala, a white marble with faint yellow streaks. Besides the famed white marbles those quarries are noted for coloured varieties of great beauty, among.. whichUlsi the bluish-gray bardiglip, ' ,'c: