Verde Antique Marble

From the Lewiston, Me., Journal: In the early centuries of the Christian era, and posslbly before, the exquisito green marble, veined with whita, whieh the ancients prized so highly for ornamental building purposes, was quarried in Thessaly. With advent of dark ages the location of the quarriea was lost and has never since been found. The ruined structures were stripped to afford decorations for modern churches and palaces, and tha marble became very expenslve. Substitutes of ordlnary green marble from Greece, France, Irela-nd, Italy and America were offered, but nothing was found to equal the real Thessalian green, or verde antique, as it is called: For ten or fifteen years it has been known that there was a deposit of green marble In Georgia, but that it was as beautiful as the old Thessalian verde antique has only been realized recently. Geofogists, by the way, do not classify verde antique as a green marble, but as a stone by itself, a serpentine, and they furthermore say that there is no such substance as verde antique marble. But none the less the stone is everywhere known as green marble, and within the last few months has won the highest praisa from American architects and builders. Several of ' Chicago's largest public buildings are being flnished with this new material. The quarry is now over sixty feet deep and the deeper it gets the better is the marble. It is expected that the world at large will jump at the chance to secure a stone so like the rare old Thessalian green. When the flrst company organized to work the marble quarry they attempted to get out the stone by blasting with dynamite, which shattered the stone and greatly wasted it. Shortly after the company went into the hands of a receiver. Last spring a Chicago stock iiompany was organized and went to work with channeling machines. During the summer the ragged hole left by the former dynamite method of working has been shaped out, the wall3 squared, the floor leveled and now blocks of stone of regular sizes, weighing eight and ten tons, are taken out. The Cherokee county verde antique seems likely to become as famous and In as great demand as was the old Thossalian greon marble.