As the common name for stone is _ḥajar_, the place where stone is found, the quarry, is called _maḥjar_, the prefix _m_ conveying the sense of locality. Rough, undressed stone blocks are called _debsh_. Those roughly squared, but undressed, are called _khâmy_. Dressed building-stones are called _ḥajar_. Flat flagstones are called _balâṭ_. Stone cut for arches goes by the name _maḳâdam_ (singular, _maḳdum_). The limestone of the country is found in several grades of hardness and desirability for different kinds of building. The very best stone for house building is a hard white limestone which holds well with lime cement and is known as _mizzy ḥulu_. _Mizzy aḥmar_ is very similar, but of a brownish-red color. The softer limestone is called _kûkûly_. The stronger kind is yellowish, _kûkûly aṣfar_; the other kind, a white stone, _kûkûly abyaḍ_. _Malakeh_ is a pretty, brilliant, white stone used decoratively in finishing over doors and windows. The very hard flint _ṣuwwân_ would ordinarily be unmanageable for building purposes. _Nâry_ is a soft, easily crumbled stone that cements together in a compact mass with lime and is used in filling in the core of house walls and in arches supporting the house floors (_muṣṭaby_) above the cellars. _Hethyân_ is similar to _nâry_, but even softer and reddish. _Huwârah_ is really decomposed stone, very soft, used as a top dressing in building roads, where it settles into a natural cement, mingling with broken rock and soil. Soil is called _trâb_ and a derivative from it, _trâby_, is used colloquially to designate clay and wet earth as materials in building. Lime is known as _shîd_ and mortar as _ṭîn_. Cement goes by an imported name _shementu_, or _ḥomrah_, literally the _red_ dust of pounded pottery. The hard cement, called _kaḥly_, used in pointing the house walls, is made of lime, _ḥomrah_, that is, pounded pottery, and _nehâteh_, the dust that falls from the work of the stone-dressers’ tools. Plaster is called _ḳaṣâreh_ or _iḳṣâreh_, and whitewash, _trâsheh_. Tile and brick go by the name _ḳermîd_. The heavy iron hammer with which rough stone is squared into workable shape is called the _shaḳûf_. The _râs_ is a heavy sort of iron hammer with pointed ends of steel used as a pick. The hammer used to drive the chisels and occasionally to do slight dressing by pounding the edges of a stone is called _muṭraḳeh_ and is quite unique in shape. Its two faces are set obliquely on the central part of the head and a short handle supplied. By this adjustment of the faces a downward stroke is more easily effected. It is of steel and about three pounds in weight. The _shâḥûṭeh_ is a heavy double steel hammer toothed at both ends. One edge may have more, and the other edge less, than twenty teeth. Two grades of face dressing may be given to a block of stone with this one tool. The _maṭabbeh_ is a very heavy hammer made of a rectangular bar of steel with ends about two inches or less square. These ends or faces are