Andrea Palladio · The First Book
Chapter IV. Of Sand
THERE are three sorts of sand commonly found; pit, river, and sea sand. The best of all is pit sand, and is either black, white, red, or ash-colour'd; which last is a kind of earth calcined by subterraneous fires pent up in the mountains, and taken out of pits in Tuscany.
They also dig out of the earth in Terra di Lavoro, in the territories of Baia and Cuma, a sort of sand, called Pozzolana by VITRUVIUS, which immediately cements in the water, and makes buildings very strong. But long experience has hewn, that of all the several kinds of pit sand, the white is the worst. The best river sand is that which is found in rapid streams; and under water-falls, because it is most purged. Sea sand, although the worst, ought to be of a blackith colour, and thine like glass: that which is large grained, and nearest to the shore, is best. Pit sand, being fattest, makes, for that reason, the most tenacious cement, and is therefore employ'd in walls and long vaults; but it is apt to crack.
River find is very fit for covering and rough-casting of walls. Sea sand soon wets and soon dries, and wastes by reason of its salt, which makes it very unfit to sustain any confi desirable weight.
Every kind of sand will be good that feels crisp when handled, and, if laid upon white clothes, will neither sain or leave earth behind it. But that sand is bad, which, being mix with water, makes it turbid and dirty: As also such as has remain’d a long while exposed to the weather; for then it will contain so much earth and corrupt moisture, that it will be apt to produce shrubs and wild fig-trees, which are very prejudicial to buildings.
Public-domain text (London, published by Isaac Ware, 1738). Read from the Internet Archive’s scan (gri_33125011569684) of the copy in the Getty Research Institute, by way of Wikimedia Commons, where it is marked public domain. That scan’s text layer had lost the ends of the lines on every left-hand page, so the pages were read again from the scan’s images, the two readings compared word by word, and the text cleaned: the long s (ſ) is printed s and the ct and st ligatures as plain letters, words broken at the ends of lines are joined, and running heads, page numbers, signatures and catchwords are removed. Ware’s spelling, capitals and punctuation are otherwise kept (shew, publick, antient, compleat). Chapter titles and words the OCR misread were corrected against the page images. Some misreadings will remain, most of them in the italic prefaces and the Latin of Book III. Ware’s dedication, the list of subscribers, his table of terms, the errata and the bookseller’s advertisement are not reproduced. Nor are the 212 engraved plates, their inscriptions, or the keys to the letters on them that Ware prints in the text: where Palladio writes “as in the design” the figure is in the printed book.