THE TRIUMPH OF LIFE 



touches the lime crust of life. It is not uniform. 

 What is there that could remain uniform in the 

 stone garment of this savage Titan! We have 

 seen how it throws its cloak into folds, bores 

 holes through it, tears it, tosses it into heaps. 

 As it has pushed the ocean aside it has torn up 

 its lime foundation. It has forced it out into the 

 open air where wind and frost and water gnaw 

 it in pieces, crush it and pulverize it into dust, 

 to be once more drunk up by the water. It is 

 thrown up into the lap of the earth, covered with 

 masses of sand and gushing lava until only the 

 miner can discover it. Wherever we study the 

 earth, there it appears to us in enormous masses, 

 even in the fragmentary forms. Not once 

 only has this lime plaster of life been spread 

 over the surface of the earth. During every 

 age in the history of the earth, each with its mil- 

 lions of years, it has been built up once, twice, 

 thrice. The ruins of each of these layers lie 

 tilted as the earth giant has stretched and 

 pulled, sunk and rose again, and hurled them 

 about now high in the air, now deep down in the 

 dark abysses of the earth. Millions of years be- 

 fore yonder coral structure began its life work, 

 that "natural rock" arose, itself a foraminiferal 

 covering for the ocean bottom — a work of life. 

 In the same period arose, in that same primitive 

 world ocean, that lime cliff which today lies be- 

 neath tlie Alpine roses on the mountain heights, 

 113 



