humanity and ignorant of those of Nature.

The language of the chalk is not hard to learn, not nearly so hard as
Latin, if you only want to get at the broad features of the story it has
to tell; and I propose that we now set to work to spell that story out
together.

We all know that if we "burn" chalk the result is quicklime. Chalk, in
fact, is a compound of carbonic acid gas, and lime, and when you make it
very hot the carbonic acid flies away and the lime is left. By this
method of procedure we see the lime, but we do not see the carbonic acid.
If, on the other hand, you were to powder a little chalk and drop it into
a good deal of strong vinegar, there would be a great bubbling and
fizzing, and, finally, a clear liquid, in which no sign of chalk would
appear. Here you see the carbonic acid in the bubbles; the lime,
dissolved in the vinegar, vanishes from sight. There are a great many
other ways of showing that chalk is essentially nothing but carbonic acid
and quicklime. Chemists enunciate the result of all the experiments which
prove this, by stating that chalk is almost wholly composed of "carbonate
of lime."

It is desirable for us to start from the knowledge of this fact, though
it may not seem to help us very far towards what we seek. For carbonate
of lime is a widely-spread substance, and is met with under very various
conditions. All sorts of limestones are composed of more or less pure
carbonate of lime. The crust which is often deposited by waters which
have drained through limestone rocks, in the form of what are called
stalagmites and stalactites, is carbonate of lime. Or, to take a more
familiar example, the fur on the inside of a tea-kettle is carbonate of
lime; and, for anything chemistry tells us to the contrary, the chalk