Okay, let me try be clear. Go to where you put the mapping type and: 1) remove the Pict Interpolation (makes pictures fuzzy) 2) check Repeat Tiling Cubic mapping should work, but set the size on all axes at about 20-25%, not -40. OTOH, the scale depends on how big your object is. The texture was squished because the dimensions of the pic don't match the dimensions of the object. If you have an object of 5x6 Bryce Units per side, a pic of 400x350 pixels will not look good. NOtice the difference in scales? That's first. The second thing, the scaling of the texture depends on the scale of the object. So if you scale the object down on Y axis, scale the texture UP on Y axis. Instead of using, let's say 20, use 10, 12, 15, whatever matches the situation. Then, you have to use the ambience. Every object has ambience. Only too much ambience makes a texture look fake. For this kind of stone, the ambience should be around ten, or possibly higher. Depends on the situation. As jedswindells says, put the texture into Diffuse and Ambient. This orange is wrong. Also, put a simple white into volume and lower the refraction to 100. It shouldn't make any difference with non-transparent materials, but sometimes it does. Never really looked into it, though. Use a bit of specularity too. Around five would be okay. And no, the texture on the object will never look exactly like in the flat photo.

-- erlik