Falmouth are the chief granite shipping ports. Granite quarries are also found in a small isolated patch at Mountsorel in Leicestershire, in the Isle of Anglesea, near Holyhead, and to a considerable extent in parts of Cumberland. Scotland is a great source of some of our best granites, which are very abundant in Aberdeenshire (shipped at Aberdeen and Peterhead), in the islands of Mull and Arran, and in Kirkcudbrightshire. The Mull granite is particularly beautiful, and of a delicate pink colour. Ireland, too, abounds in excellent granite in the mountains of Wicklow, Donegal, Galway and Down; so that with such plentiful supplies, we are not likely to run short of this valuable building stone. Granite, however, is not the hardest stone that England possesses, for there are certain rocks of volcanic or igneous origin, known as greenstones or basalts, which are so very intractable as to be almost useless for building purposes, though this very quality makes them valuable for road paving and "metalling." The principal supplies of these come from Penmaenmawr in Carnarvonshire, the Clee Hills near Ludlow (Shropshire), and Bardon Hill in Leicestershire. Slates, one of the most necessary of our building materials, are quarried from the oldest geological rocks (mostly of Lower Silurian or Cambrian date), and are principally found on the north coast of Cornwall at Delabole and Tintagel, and in North Wales, where are the celebrated slate quarries of Llanberis and Bethesda near Bangor, and Festiniog in Merionethshire. The former are shipped at Bangor, and the latter at Portmadoc, to which place a very curious railway brings the slates down from the moun

tains. Though slates are very common, really good slates are not so plentiful, and the owners of valuable quarries, like those above mentioned, have gained vast fortunes out of them. Nearly all our remaining building stones are of lime or sandstone formation, though they vary much as to their geological age. Mountain limestone, of the coal measure or carboniferous age, is very common all over Great Britain and Ireland. While being a most valuable stone, it is not so much used, except locally, for building, being rather too brittle, but it is extensively employed for making lime and for a “flux” in the process of iron smelting. For this reason, limestone quarries are most generally found not very far distant from the iron districts. In Derbyshire, however, at Ashford and Bakewell, the limestone is of a very beautiful kind, and there is a considerable industry carried on in marble polishing. The limestones of an earlier age, called Devonian, and quarried largely in the south of Devon, are harder and more ornamental, and therefore are in more request with builders. The great Plymouth breakwater is built of this Devonian limestone, though it is an interesting fact, according to Professor Hull, that the portion below water had to be faced with granite, owing to the destruction caused to the limestone by innumerable boring shell fish. The mag

nesian limestone, or "dolomite," is one of our most beautiful building stones, though it is unfortunately soft and apt to wear away, as is seen in the case of the Houses of Parliament at Westminster. Mansfield, in Nottinghamshire, and from thence running up through the eastern portion of Yorkshire, are the principal

localities for these quarries. The most perfect building stones in England, whether for colour, durability, or treatment, are from the oolite formation, which are most developed in Gloucestershire, Dorsetshire, Wiltshire, and the northern part of Somersetshire-in fact, Occupying the extensive high ground known as the Cotswold Hills, and extending thence south-west to the sea at Weymouth. Cheltenham, Stroud, Painswick, Bath, Box and Corsham are the most abundant localities in which the best oolite or “free” stones are worked; but they are also quarried pretty extensively in Oxfordshire near Burford (part of the same Cotswold range), in Yorkshire near Scarborough, at Ancaster in Lincolnshire, and also in Northamptonshire. The Portland stone, quarried on the Isle of Portland, near Weymouth, is one of the most celebrated stones in the world, and with it were built St Paul's, the Custom House, and many of our London churches and principal buildings. It must be borne in mind, however, that though these valuable building stones come from the same formation of oolite, they are not all of the same geological age, or, indeed, of the same value. Of sandstones of the various formations there is no lack, though, as building stones, they very seldom approach the value of those already alluded to. Many of these, nevertheless, are of good colour and durability, and particularly those of the Old Red sandstone, the best being those of Devonian age. In the north of Scotland, at Arbroath in Forfarshire, and Caithness and Thurso, in the extreme north, the old red sandstones are of very great value as paving and flag stones. The coal measure sandstones

are seldom much used for building, being too coarse and absorbent of water; but the millstone grit of this age is a very hard building stone, and much used in Manchester and the West Riding of Yorkshire, where there is an extensive area of country of this particular formation. The coal measure sandstones sometimes furnish excellent flag and paving stones, and especially at Elland in Yorkshire. The Triassic, or New Red sandstone, is largely developed in the neighbourhood of Liverpool (a great part of which is built of it), thence extending southwards into Cheshire, Shropshire and Worcestershire.

The chalk rocks, which are very abundant in the south and east of England, are mostly used for limeburning, the most busy locality of this trade being at Burham, on the banks of the Medway. These are our principal riches in building stones, which are obtained from about 3000 different quarries in Great Britain and Ireland, producing about 17,000,000 tons of stone, of the value of four million pounds sterling.

If we turn now to the flat parts of the country, we shall find that, though they do not yield building stones, they are almost equally valuable for producing clays and earths, absolutely necessary for the carrying on of some of our greatest industries. Bricks and draining-pipes are made in vast quantities in all parts of England; for there are very few counties, and particularly in the south and east, which do not contain more or less extensive beds of clay. Almost every large town has one or more brickfields in its neighbourhood; but the chief brickmaking localities, as an

industry, are found in Kent, Essex and Norfolk. The banks of the Medway and Swale in Kent, and particularly at Faversham and Sittingbourne, are lined with large brickfields, where millions upon millions of bricks are annually turned out; and the importance of the trade may be gathered from the fact that over 40,000 persons are employed in it. Clays are also dug of a special character, and for a special purpose. In Cornwall, and particularly in the neighbourhood of St Austell, and also at Lee Moor in Devonshire, a large industry exists of digging and preparing china clay for the Staffordshire potteries. It is really a kind of granite rock in a decomposed state, and is used in the manufacture of porcelain to the amount of about 130,000 tons a year. From the tertiary beds of Devon and Dorset at Teignmouth, Poole and Wareham, another kind, called ball clay, is dug, and used for earthenware; all these clays being shipped from St Austell and Poole to Runcorn in Cheshire, whence they go by the Bridgewater Canal to the Potteries. For the same manufacture, flints are dug from out of the chalk and sent to the same district, a busy, smoky portion of North Staffordshire, some twelve miles long, embracing the populous towns of Stoke-upon-Trent, Hanley, Burslem, Tunstall, Newcastle-under-Lyme, and Longton. The trade of making pottery in all its multitudinous branches, from the coarsest stoneware to the most elaborate and expensive china, has so greatly increased, that the population of the Staffordshire potteries during the present century has mounted up from 23,626 to 187,225, though a very large number of these are engaged also in iron and coal works. But