Healthful Sports for Boys – Alfred Rochefort – Platanus Publishing

“Germans are the greatest toy and game-makers in the world, and so we should not be surprised to learn that that great countr y not only produces the most marbles, but also the very best. From Germany we get the finest “agates,” the beauty and value of which every lover of the game knows.

The more common marbles are made in Saxony, of a fine kind of white limestone, which is practically a variety of the building material known as “marble,” and from which the name is derived. Broken into small pieces, and the irregular bits placed between two grooved grinders, the lower one being stone and the upper wood, power is applied, and after much rotating the spheres are turned out, hundreds at a time, and these are afterwards sorted and polished.”