ORGANIC AGENTS

We must reckon the roots of plants and trees among the agents which break rocks into pieces.  The tiny rootlet in its search for food and moisture inserts itself into some minute rift, and as it grows slowly wedges the rock apart.  Moreover, the acids of the root corrode the rocks with which they are in contact.  One may sometimes find in the soil a block of limestone wrapped in a mesh of roots, each of which lies in a little furrow where it has eaten into the stone.

Rootless plants called lichens often cover and corrode rocks as yet bare of soil; but where lichens are destroying the rock less rapidly than does the weather, they serve in a way as a protection.

Conditions favoring disintegration and decay.  The disintegration of rocks under frost and temperature changes goes on most rapidly in cold and arid climates, and where vegetation is scant or absent.  On the contrary, the decay of rocks under the chemical action of water is favored by a warm, moist climate and abundant vegetation.  Frost and heat and cold can only act within the few feet from the surface to which the necessary temperature changes are limited, while water penetrates and alters the rocks to great depths.

The pupil may explain.

In what ways the presence of joints and bedding planes assists in the breaking up and decay of rocks under the action of the weather.

Why it is a good rule of stone masons never to lay stones on edge, but always on their natural bedding planes.

Why stones fresh from the quarry sometimes go to pieces in early winter, when stones which have been quarried for some months remain uninjured.

Why quarrymen in the northern states often keep their quarry floors flooded during winter.

Why laminated limestone should not be used for curbstone.

Why rocks composed of layers differing in fineness of grain and in ratios of expansion do not make good building stone.

Fine-grained rocks with pores so small that capillary attraction keeps the water which they contain from readily draining away are more apt to hold their pores ten elevenths full of water than are rocks whose pores are larger.  Which, therefore, are more likely to be injured by frost?

Which is subject to greater temperature changes, a dark rock or one of a light color? the north side or the south side of a valley?

THE MANTLE OF ROCK WASTE

We have seen that rocks are everywhere slowly wasting away.  They are broken in pieces by frost, by tree roots, and by heat and cold.  They dissolve and decompose under the chemical action of water and the various corrosive substances which it contains, leaving their insoluble residues as residual clays and sands upon the surface.  As a result there is everywhere forming a mantle of rock waste which covers the land.  It is well to imagine how the country would appear were this mantle with its soil and vegetation all scraped away or had it never been formed.  The surface of the land would then be everywhere of bare rock as unbroken as a quarry floor.