3. Madreporic marbles, presenting animal remains in the shape of white or gray spots, with regularly disposed dots and stars in the centre.
4. Shell marbles; with only a few shells interspersed in the calcareous base.
5. Lumachella marbles, entirely composed of shells.
6. Cipolin marbles, containing veins of greenish talc.
7. Breccia marbles, formed of a number of angular fragments of different marbles, united by a common cement.
8. Puddingstone marbles; a conglomerate of rounded pieces.
Antique marbles.—The most remarkable of these are the following:—Parian marble, called lychnites by the ancients, because its quarries were worked by lamps; it has a yellowish-white colour; and a texture composed of fine shining scales, lying in all directions. The celebrated Arundelian tables at Oxford consist of Parian marble, as well as the Medicean Venus. Pentelic marble, from Mount Penteles, near Athens, resembles the Parian, but is somewhat denser and finer grained, with occasional greenish zones, produced by greenish talc, whence it is called by the Italians Cipolino statuario. The Parthenon, Propyleum, the Hippodrome, and other principal monuments of Athens, were of Pentelic marble; of which fine specimens may be seen among the Elgin collection, in the British Museum. Marmo Greco, or Greek white marble, is of a very lively snow white colour, rather harder than the preceding, and susceptible of a very fine polish. It was obtained from several islands of the Archipelago, as Scio, Samos, Lesbos, &c. Translucent white marble, Marmo statuario of the Italians, is very much like the Parian, only not so opaque. Columns and altars of this marble exist in Venice, and several towns of Lombardy; but the quarries are quite unknown. Flexible white marble, of which five or six tables are preserved in the house of Prince Borghese, at Rome. The White marble of Luni, on the coast of Tuscany, was preferred by the Greek sculptors to both the Parian and Pentelic. White marble of Carrara, between Specia and Lucca, is of a fine white colour, but often traversed by gray veins, so that it is difficult to procure moderately large pieces free from them. It is not so apt to turn yellow as the Parian marble. This quarry was worked by the ancients, having been opened in the time of Julius Cæsar. Many antique statues remain of this marble. Its two principal quarries at the present day are those of Pianello and Polvazzo. In the centre of its blocks very limpid rock-crystals are sometimes found, which are called Carrara diamonds. As the finest qualities are becoming excessively rare, it has risen in price to about 3 guineas the cubic foot. The White marble of Mount Hymettus, in Greece, was not of a very pure white, but inclined a little to gray. The statue of Meleager, in the French Museum, is of this marble.
Black antique marble, the Nero antico of the Italians. This is more intensely black than any of our modern marbles; it is extremely scarce, occurring only in sculptured pieces. The red antique marble, Egyptum of the ancients, and Rosso antico of the Italians, is a beautiful marble of a deep blood-red colour, interspersed with white veins and with very minute white dots, as if strewed over with grains of sand. There is in the Grimani palace at Venice, a colossal statue of Marcus Agrippa in rosso antico, which was formerly preserved in the Pantheon at Rome. Green antique marble, verde antico, is a kind of breccia, whose paste is a mixture of talc and limestone, while the dark green fragments consist of serpentine. Very beautiful specimens of it are preserved at Parma. The best quality has a grass-green paste, with black spots of noble serpentine, but is never mingled with red spots. Red spotted green antique marble, has a dark green ground marked with small red and black spots, with fragments of entrochi changed into white marble. It is known only in small tablets. Leek marble; a rare variety of that colour, of which there is a table in the Mint at Paris. Marmo verde pagliocco is of a yellowish green colour, and is found only in the ruins of ancient Rome. Cervelas marble of a deep red, with numerous gray and white veins, is said to be found in Africa, and highly esteemed in commerce. Yellow antique marble, giallo antico of the Italians; colour of the yolk of an egg, either uniform or marked with black or deep yellow rings. It is rare, but may be replaced by Sienna marble. Red and white antique marbles, found only among the ruins of ancient Rome. Grand antique, a breccia marble, containing shells, consists of large fragments of a black marble, traversed by veins or lines of a shining white. There are four columns of it in the Museum at Paris. Antique Cipolino marble. Cipolin is a name given to all such marbles as have greenish zones produced by green talc; their fracture is granular and shining, and displays here and there plates of talc. Purple antique breccia marble, is very variable in the colour and size of its spots. Antique African breccia, has a black ground, variegated with large fragments of a grayish-white, deep red, or purplish wine colour; and is one of the most beautiful marbles. Rose-coloured antique breccia marble is very scarce, occurring only in small tablets. There are various other kinds of ancient breccias, which it would be tedious to particularize.
Modern marbles.—1. British. Black marble is found at Ashford, Matlock, and Monsaldale in Derbyshire; black and white in the north part of Devonshire; the variegated marbles of Devonshire are generally reddish, brownish, and grayish, variously veined with white and yellow, or the colours are often intimately blended; the marbles from Torbay and Babbacombe, display a great variety in the mixture of their colours; the Plymouth marble is either ash-coloured with black veins, or blackish-gray and white, shaded with black veins; the cliffs near Marychurch exhibit marble quarries not only of great extent, but of superior beauty to any other in Devonshire, being either of a dove-coloured ground with reddish-purple and yellow veins, or of a black ground mottled with purplish globules. The green marble of Anglesea is not unlike the verde antico; its colours being greenish-black, leek-green, and sometimes dull purplish, irregularly blended with white. The white part is limestone, the green shades proceed from serpentine and asbestos. There are several fine varieties of marble in Derbyshire; the mottled-gray in the neighbourhood of Moneyash, the light gray being rendered extremely beautiful by the number of purple veins which spread upon its polished surface in elegant irregular branches; but its chief ornament is the multitude of entrochi, with which this transition limestone-marble abounds. Much of the transition and carboniferous limestone of Wales and Westmoreland is capable of being worked up into agreeable dark marbles.
In Scotland, a particularly fine variety of white marble is found in immense beds, at Assynt in Sutherlandshire. A beautiful ash-gray marble of a very uniform grain, and susceptible of a fine polish, occurs on the north side of the ferry of Ballachulish in Invernesshire. One of the most beautiful varieties is that from the hill of Belephetrich in Tiree, one of the Hebrides. Its colours are pale blood-red, light flesh-red, and reddish-white, with dark green particles of hornblende, or rather sahlite, diffused through the general base. The compact marble of Iona is of a fine grain, a dull white colour, somewhat resembling pure compact felspar. It is said by Bournon, to consist of an intimate mixture of tremolite and carbonate of lime, sometimes with yellowish or greenish-yellow spots. The carboniferous limestone of many of the coal basins in the lowlands of Scotland may be worked into a tolerably good marble for chimney-pieces.