Marble
2 of the 7 encyclopedias on this shelf carry an entry for Marble. Both are reproduced below, so you can see where they agree and where they differ.
Aiton's Encyclopedia (1910)
a limestone that has become close grained under the influence of heat and pressure. It is simply a fine grained limestone susceptible of receiving a polish. The most celebrated marble in the world is that of Mount Pentelicus in Attica, Greece. The Parian marble quarried in the Isle of Paros was much used by sculptors. The marble best known to the modern artist is that from the quarries of Carrara, Italy. There are excellent marbles in England, the Hebrides, and Algeria, and also in Mexico and eastern Canada. The Rocky Mountain region abounds in ledges of marble that must some day prove very valuable. California has deposits. The marble of Georgia is much used for capitol buildings. Tennessee marble was used extensively for the capitols at Albany and Washington. The famous mausoleum, known as the Taj Mahal , at Agra, India, is built of beautiful marble. The chief seat of the marble industry in the United States is located, however, in the northeastern part. The quarries of Pennsylvania, New York , and especially Vermont, are celebrated. More marble is quarried at Rutland in the last named state than at any other place in the world. Instead of drills and explosives, involving tedious expense and waste of material, channels are cut in the marble ledges by steam power. A ledge is bored and scored like an ice pond. A gang of chisels held in a frame cuts a groove in the ledge, releasing huge blocks of any desired size. Powerful steam cranes remove these blocks from the quarry and place them in position where they may be cut by toothless steam saws into any desired shape or size. The marble output of Vermont alone is valued at $6,000,000 a year. Marble differs greatly in color, varying from a pure, snowy white to marble that is positively black in color. Parian marble has a waxy appearance when polished. Carrara marble is of a glistening whiteness. Colored marble is made so from an oxide or other impurities. The colored marbles most used are the rosso-antico of a bloodred color; verde antico, which is green; and giallo antico, which is yellow with black or yellow rings. Nero antico is black. Colored marbles were used by the ancients for statuary and for the pillars used in the construction of houses. White marble is a sort of limestone which has not only become changed in texture by heat and pressure, but it has lost its color. The finest white statuary marble is worth from fifteen to twenty dollars per cubic foot. See Carrara ; Sculpture ; Stucco ; Limestone Old Tennessee. Sienna. Florentine Vermont. Marbles Alps Green. Mexican Onyx. African Marble. Marbles
Collier's New Encyclopedia (1921)
a popular name for any limestone which is sufficiently hard to JEAN PAUL MARAT take a fine polish. Any calcareous or even any other rock which takes a good polish and is suitable for decorative or architectural purposes. Arranged by color as Da Costa does, there are: (1) Marbles of one plain color, which may be black, white, ash, gray, brown, red, yellow, blue, or green; (2) Marbles of two colors, which are simply the foregoing marbles variegated with other colors; (3) Marbles variegated with many colors; and (4) Marbles containing shells, corals, and other extraneous bodies. Some of the fossiliferous limestones furnish excellent marbles. For instance, the encrinital limestones of the Carboniferous formation have the fossils white in a dark gray or black matrix. Non-fossiliferous crystalline marbles, consisting of sedimentary calcareous strata, altered by metamorphism, also furnish good marbles. The statuary marble of Italy may be of this character. The purest kinds are used for statues, those less pure as building material. The Carrara and Parian marbles are of this type. Other marbles are the Verd Antique, the Fire Marble or Lumachelle, the Giallo Antico, Madreporic Marble, etc. The Grand Cañon of the Colorado is lined in many places with magnificent marble of various colors. Elgin marbles, a collection of bassirilievi and fragments of statuary brought from the Parthenon at Athens to England by Lord Elgin in 1814. They were afterward purchased by the British Government, and are now in the British Museum. They consist chiefly of the metopes, representing for the most part the combats of the Centaurs and Lapithæ, and the statues of fragments of statues which ornamented the tympana of the pediments of the Parthenon, or Temple of Minerva. To those were added the frieze from the Temple of Nike Apteros, a series of casts from the Temple of Theseus, and the choragic monument of Lysicrates.