Elastic MARBLE, an extraordinary species of fossil which has surprised all the naturalists who have seen it. There are several tables of it preserved in the house of Prince Borghese at Rome, and shown to the curious. F. Jacquier, a celebrated mathematician, has given a description in the Literary Gazette of Paris, but the naturalists cannot be contented with it. If permission was given to make the requisite experiments,
Marble. ments, this curious phenomenon might be better illustrated. There are five or six tables of that marble; their length is about two feet and a half, the breadth about ten inches, and the thickness a little less than three. They were dug up, as the Abbé Fortis was told, in the feed of Mondragone; the grain is of Carrarese marble, or perhaps of the finest Greek. They seem to have suffered some attack of fire; though the first degree of pulverization observable in the angles, can, perhaps, scarcely be called that of imperfect calcination. They are very dry, do not yield to external impression, resound to the hammer, like other congenerous marble, and are perhaps susceptible of a polish. Being set on end, they bend oscillating backward and forward; when laid horizontally, and raised at one end, they form a curve, beginning towards the middle; if placed on a table, and a piece of wood or any thing else is laid under them, they make a salient curve, and touch the table with both ends. Notwithstanding this flexibility, they are liable to be broken if indiscreetly handled; and therefore one table only, and that not the best, is shown to the curious. Formerly they were altogether in the prince's apartment on the ground floor.