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fore, l)e co!)s1c1ltl'(1 a useful prnct'c;ii rule, tliat, bowevur soft a stone i/iay l)e, if it resist tlie
liability of damage until out of tlie masons' liands, there can be little doul)t of its possess-
ing sufficient coliesive strengtli for any i<ind of architectural work. If tlie foundation be
insufficient, or any part of tlie edifice give way, so as to cause an unfair or unequal pres-
oure, a soft stone will, of course, yield sooner than a liard one."
ISQ^d. "Unfortunately," writes Warr, Di/iKunic, 1851, "those experimcntnl results
which we possess were obtained witlmut attention to the fact that the sjKciir.ens should lie of
a certain height to show a proper compressive strength. The bulk of the examples an;
with cubes, a fault excusable witli those exjierimenteis who made their work ])uhlic before
those iiecullarities were well known, but the same cannot lie said of the investigations con-
ducted liy the Commissioners ; these exjieriments, executed with singular minuteness on
some points, would have been useful, from their variety and s|)ecification of the localiti's,
but they were made on (2 -inch) cubes, at a period when the laws of fracture were as publ c
as at ])resent, and are therefore of limited value."
1502e. Ilodgkinson {Phil. Trans., 1840, p. 385), found that in small columns (if one
inch to one and three-c]uarters inch square, and from one to forty inches long, a great
falling ofi' occurred when the height was greater than twelve times the side of the base.
Tims, when the length was