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The operative sentence below is: “ The brecciated marbles are composed of angular fragments....” http://chestofbooks.com/reference/American-Cyclopaedia-7/Marble.html "It is also of variegated colors, and sometimes is of brecciated structure, evidently made up of fragments of an older rock, the layers of which, broken up and confusedly rearranged, have been cemented together. Though thus varying greatly in color, texture, and structure, the composition of marble is for the most part essentially the same; it is a carbonate of lime, or a combined carbonate of lime and carbonate of magnesia, and is readily burned to quicklime. The following are convenient divisions in which marbles may be arranged for a general notice of the most important of them: 1, the simple or single-colored marbles; 2, the variegated; 3, the brecciated; 4, the lumachella or fossiliferous. These sorts, however, pass into each other, so that some may be placed indifferently either in one or the other of two groups. The marbles of this class found in the United States east of the Rocky mountains have not attained much celebrity, nor do we know of any worthy of it, unless we should include among them certain varieties of the brecciated marbles from northern Vermont and Tennessee. The gray and white clouded limestones of Thomaston, Me., are quarried to considerable extent for marble, and may be seen in common use in portions of the eastern states. They possess little beauty. California has furnished of this class some very showy marble of brilliant reddish and brownish colors, and susceptible of a high polish. It is imported into New York and used for mantels. 3. The brecciated marbles are composed of angular fragments, it may be of various mineral substances, united in a bed or paste of calcareous cement; or the mass may be so divided by numerous veins into pieces as to present the appearance of broken fragments irregularly united. Brocatellas are breccias, in which the fragments are very small; we incorrectly apply the name only to a reddish brecciated marble brought to this country from Spain. The varieties of this class are very numerous; but some of the most celebrated are never seen here, such as those called le grand deuil and le petit deuil, literally the full mourning and the half mourning. These come from the Pyrenees and different parts of France; they are of a black ground spotted with white fragments. Among the brecciated marbles of the United States, the best known is that of the Potomac on the Maryland side, some miles below the Point of Rocks. The principal use that has been made of it was to furnish the columns in the old chamber of representatives at Washington. The irregularities of hardness in the different ingredients render it an expensive stone to work; still the quarries are deserving of more than government patronage. The stone is certainly handsomer than the Italian red and white breccia imported for the inner columns of the central arched entrance of the church before mentioned. Quarries have been opened in the northern part of Vermont, near Lake Champlain, which produce the most beautiful of the American colored marbles. They are brecciated, though they pass into the variegated. They present a great variety of colors, from a deep red, traversed with veins of white, to rose-tinted flesh color mottled with whitish spots. In some specimens the brecciated structure is very strongly marked, the fragments being large with sharp edges and of decided shades of dark red, drab, and salmon, upon a ground of white bordered with rose." CLEARLY, the beads being discussed in this thread are NOT "brecciated" anything. The patterns are rounded, and look like melted glass. Further, the dispersion patterns within the pale glass, where the glass has tended to separate due to over-heating, is typical of many beads that imitate minerals. These beads are not "calcium." JDA. All rights reserved by Bead Collector Network and its users |
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