CARBONATE OF LIME. 145 



myriads of bacteria on the roots of this sweet clover, 

 busily soil building, getting this waste land ready 

 for more useful things. 



Now we stand at the brink of the quarry, a great 

 hole in the ground. Our gray haired teacher asks 

 us if we know what is the most durable of all man's 

 work upon earth, and smilingly he tells us that the 

 most permanent thing that man has ever yet 

 achieved is a hole in the ground. But, think of 

 the human energy required to quarry and cart away 

 these millions of tons of limestone that once filled 

 this excavation; and think further than that, to the 

 time when this part of the earth was a shallow sea 

 where warm waves rocked endlessly and little shell- 

 fish swam and crawled, and dying one by one, be- 

 queathed their bones to make the limestone that was 

 one day to become this rock; and next, the quarry- 

 men, short, thick, brown men, hugely muscled, 

 pounding away upon the rocks as though they loved 

 it. They too tell the story of lime, for is not the 

 island of Sicily one limestone rock? Yes, and these 

 sturdy peasants tell another story, the story of the 

 vigor that may come from simple living. For cen- 

 turies their food has been macaroni and olive oil, 

 with, let us hope, an orange for dessert, and yet to- 

 day they can in physical energy far surpass the 

 meat-eating American. And what are they doing, 

 these swarthy Italians, with dynamite mightily shat- 

 tering this rock, with steam locomotives dragging it 

 to the crushers, and there dumping it into yawning 

 jaws that mightily bite and chew it until it is shaped 



