Rensselaer Republican, Volume 26, Number 15, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 7 December 1893 — Plastic Marble. [ARTICLE]

Plastic Marble.

In one account of Rome the author mentions five or six slabs of elastle marble as being in possession of the Prince Borghese. Being set on end they bend backward and forward; when laid horizontally and raised at one end they form a curve; if placed on a table and a piece of wood or any other substance is laid under them they fall into a kind of curve, each end touching the table. The Abbe Fortis was told that they were dug up near the town of Mondragon, in the kingdom of Naples. The tf'grain ais like fine Carrara marble, or perhaps of the finest Greek. They seem to have suffered some attack of fire. A slab of marble similar in every respect to those described, and highly polished, has been exhibited for more than twen-ty-five years in the British Museum. M. Fleuvian de Belvae succeeded in making a common granulated limestone, a granular quartz, completely flexible br exposing them to a certain degree of heat. In Lincoln Cathedral, England, there is an arch built of white marble which is quite elastic, yielding to a heavy tread and returning or rebounding to its origidal position on true elastic principles.