BEAUTIFUL BUILDING STONES.

Timaru Herald, Volume XIIIC, Issue 13716, 5 October 1908, Page 6

BEAUTIFUL BUILDING STONES.

Technical education appears to be, in its higher aspects, a great deal further advanced in .New. South Wales thaii in New. Zealairt. An indication of this fact is td ij,; found in a handbook and leaflet jw* teceirert from Mr K. T. Baker, Curjah* W the Technological Museum, Sydkfcy. The leaflet is a brief description of the museum, a collection of objects intended not merely to satisfy cariosity but to impress upon the visitor the value and importance of the exhibits from a "techHtcal," in commercial or industrial point of view; the exhibits being natural or manufactured products of the country. The handbook is the 14th of a "Technical Education Series," issued by the Delartment of Public. Instruction. It treats of the building and; ornamental stone* of New &>oth Wales, and does so in a manner calculated to suggest "regardless of | space." This is explained by a note on a fly-leaf indicating that it was prepared for the Franco-British Exhibition. Besides many first-class processs engravings of public edifices built of the local stones, it contains about five-and-twenty beautiful coloured representations of the granite and figured marbles found in the State. So well done indeed that on"lie smooth paper the_ pictures look precisely like polished specimens of the stones themselves. They are wonderfully good examples of three-colour work. The imprint is that of the Government printer, and as a specimen of the printers' art the handbook does the office, and Sydney, imprint credit. Mr Baker adds a short description of the several varieties of the etones, and indicates the Idealities where they are or may bo quarried. There are grey and red granites, seme fine, some large grained, trachytes *nd basalts and sandstones. But the large share of *pacc is devoted to the marbles. These are said to be inexhaustible, the list of localities is a long one, and at most of them the marbles are found at the surface. The marbles are nearly all variegated, a few being black and white. No pure white has yet been obtained, bat it is expected that deeper working in the quarries* of almost white stone will reach quite white layers. There wa« a good exhibit of these stones in the New South Wales Court ajt> the late Christchurch Exhibition, and one quarry of them will be represented in some decorative pillarettes in the addition to St. Mary's Church.