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 
