Clyde's pickup -- Part I : The ecstatic skin of the earth. Stardust -- The first soil -- Humus -- Saint Phocas as fertilizer -- Sweet and sour soils -- The sand drowns the sea, the sea takes the sand -- Virgin soil -- Part II : The matrix. Fire and ice -- Dirt -- The theory and practice of manuring -- John Adams's manure piles -- The compost men -- The soil of graves -- The dung beetle -- The almost perfect recipe -- Part III : On diggin holes. Lessons in digging -- On digging holes -- Phalloi and calendars -- The hole to China -- Part IV : Earth and stone. Earthquakes and moonquakes -- The circulation of stone -- Old quarries -- The foundations of cathedrals -- Groundwater -- Part V : Clay alive. In a landscape of clays -- The theory of salt -- Crevice invasion -- Clay and life -- Kaolin -- The path of a clay crystal -- Part VI : In the dark. On gopher humps -- Of worms -- Perception in earthworms -- The pharmacy of molds -- Part VII : Human soil. The soil and the devil -- The soil apocalypse of George Perkins Marsh -- Husbandry in Rome -- Dio-He-Ko -- Part VIII : Visions of the soil. Underground horizons -- Wind and soil -- The soil man -- Into the pits -- The earth for Jefferson and Adams -- Stardust.
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