Publisher's Synopsis
Excerpt from Preliminary Report on the Building Stones of Nevada, Including a Brief Chapter on Road Metal, Vol. 1
To the average man, any rock is either a granite, a porphyry, a sandstone, or a slate; these terms are all embracing. Were it not that this loose use of terms is productive of actual loss in construction, by causing a misunderstanding of the characterise, tics of a stone, with consequent misuse, this chapter would be superfluous. But when such a broad error is made as the use of a partially decomposed volcanic rock, an andesite, under the belief that it was a sandstone, which is a rock not often subject to decomposition, at least in the better grades, the writer feels it necessary to present in some detail the various types of rocks found in the earth.
The first question naturally arising is this: What is a rock? A proper definition is as follows: A rock is any material making up an integral part of the earth; that is, any substance which ex ists in large enough amount to be considered as constituting an essential portion of the globe. This definition, however, though a strictly scientific one, seems rather too broad for our present needs, for by it the soils, water, ice, and all the soft as well as hard materials, are classified under one great head. Here we are only to consider the hard rocks, or stones, and have use for no others. The definition should be kept in mind, nevertheless, for there is no well defined line between a sand and a sandstone, a clay and a shale, or a gravel and a conglomerate.
About the Publisher
Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com
This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.
