ly the placing in position of
some enormous panes of glass in a handsome new building. The glass was
the best French plate, and the workmen handled it as carefully as if
it were worth something more than a week's wages. The task of putting
it in place was no sooner completed than one of the workmen grabbed a
pot of whiting and with a big brush daubed a lot of meaningless marks
on it. I thought it about as silly a thing as a man could do, and with
the usual reportorial curiosity asked the foreman why he allowed it.
The answer was a crusher. "Why," said he, "we have to mark them in
that way or they'd be smashed in no time." My look of amazement
doubtless prompted him to further explanation, for he said: "You see,
the workmen around a new building get in the custom of shoving lumber,
etc., through the open sash before the glass is put in. They would
continue to do it even after the glass is in if we didn't do something
to attract their attention. That's the reason you always see new
windows daubed with glaring white marks. Even if a careless workman
does start to shove a stick of timber through a costly plate of glass
he will stop short when his eye catches the danger sign. That white
mark is just a signal which says, 'Look out; you'll break me if you
are not careful.'"--_Chicago Journal._

THE STRUCTURE OF SANDSTONE.[1]

AS AFFECTING ARCHITECTURAL AND ENGINEERING WORKS.

[Illustration]

The native stones we Liverpool architects have at command are all
sandstones belonging to the geological division called the Trias, or,
in older phraseology, the "New Red Sandstone," which lies above the
coal-measures. The term "New Red" was given to distinguish these rocks
from the "Old Red," which lies below the Mountain Limestone, the
lowest division of the carboniferous rocks. It is, perhaps, needless
to remark that the "New Red" is not always red; sometimes it is
yellow, at others, like some of the Storeton stone, white. These red
rocks occupy a large part of Lancashire and Cheshire, and especially
in the latter county give the characteristic scenery which
distinguishes it. The escarpment of the Peckforton Hills of which
Beeston Castle Hill is an outlier, and that at Malpas, farther south,
gives rise to some very beautiful scenery; and again at Grinshill and
Hawkstone, in Shropshire, we have a repetition of much the same kind
of landscape. It will be necessary for my purpose to say briefly that
these red rocks have been d