A large part of the structure of the earth's crust is formed of a substance called limestone. Ordinary limestone is a compound of common lime and carbon dioxide, a gas that is found mixed with the air to a very small degree. Carbon dioxide will be better known by the older people as carbonic acid. It is a gas that is given off whenever wood and coal are burned, or any substance containing carbon. It is composed of one atom of carbon to two of oxygen. Every ton of coal that is burned sends off three and two-thirds tons of this gas. The increase in weight comes from the fact that every atom of carbon unites with two of oxygen, which it takes from the air, and the oxygen is heavier than the carbon. In comparing the relative weights of atoms (the smallest combinable particle of a solid, liquid, or gas) we use the hydrogen atom as the unit of comparison and call it "one," because it is the lightest of all atoms. The carbon atom is twelve times heavier than the hydrogen atom, and the oxygen atom is sixteen times heavier. Hence it will be seen readily how a ton of coal will form two and two-thirds times its weight of carbonic dioxide. Lime, having a strong affinity or attraction for this gas, has absorbed it from the air and water, forming what is known as carbonate of lime--which is the ordinary limestone. Chalk and the various marbles are also carbonates of lime. Limestone strata in the crust of the earth are found in all the periods of the earth's formation. All forms of sea shells that were once the homes of animal life are constructed of this compound; and in the later formations of limestone, in the Secondary and Tertiary periods, we find this rock to be made up almost entirely of marine shells, some of them microscopic in size. The earlier or older formations of limestone that are found deeper down in the earth's crust are less mingled with these marine shells. This comes from the fact that the first deposition of limestone strata occurred before the later forms of sea life had developed. Whatever signs of life are found in these lower stratifications are of the very lowest order. It is not to be understood that animal life is a necessary factor in the formation of limestone, but it has been an incidental feature which no doubt has been the chief means of gathering up from the water this compound and precipitating it into the great limestone strata that are everywhere found.