The flowers anew returning seasons bring,But beauty faded has no second spring.
Ambrose Philips, Pastoral
If Winter comes, can Spring be far behind?
Percy Bysshe Shelley, Ode to the West Wind
The year's at the spring,And day's at the morn;Morning's at seven;The hill-side's dew-pearl'd;The lark's on the wing;The snail's on the thorn;God's in His heaven--All's right with the world !
Robert Browning, Pippa's Song in Pippa Passes
Is it so small a thingTo have enjoy'd the sun,To have lived light in the spring,To have loved, to have thought, to have done;
Matthew Arnold, "From the Hymn of Empedocles"
Listen, can you hear it? Spring's sweet cantata. The strains of grass pushing through the snow. The song of buds swelling on the vine. The tender timpani of a baby robin's heart. Spring.
Diane Frolov and Andrew Schneider, Northern Exposure, Wake Up Call, 1992
O, how this spring of love resembleth The uncertain glory of an April day!
William Shakespeare, The Two Gentlemen of Verona, Act 1 scene 3
Nothing is so beautiful as Spring—When weeds, in wheels, shoot long and lovely and lush;Thrush’s eggs look little low heavens, and thrushThrough the echoing timber does so rinse and wringThe ear, it strikes like lightning to hear him sing.
Gerard Manley Hopkins, "Spring"
The following is a list of various types of
limestoneLimestone is a sedimentary rock composed largely of the minerals calcite and aragonite, which are different crystal forms of calcium carbonate . Many limestones are composed from skeletal fragments of marine organisms such as coral or foraminifera....
according to location.
Egypt
- Tura Limestone
Tura was a site in Ancient Egypt, located about halfway between modern Cairo and Helwan. It was Egypt's primary quarry for limestone. The limestone from Tura was the finest and whitest of all the Egyptian quarries, so it was used for facing stones for the richest tombs, as well as for the floors...
, used for the Great PyramidThe Great Pyramid of Giza is the oldest and largest of the three pyramids in the Giza Necropolis bordering what is now El Giza, Egypt. It is the oldest of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World, and the only one to remain largely intact...
casing stones
- Mokattam Limestone
Mokattam and the Moqattam Hills, , also Muqattam and Moqattam Mountain, is the name of a hill range and a suburb in them, located in southeastern Cairo, Egypt.-Landform:...
, Great PyramidThe Great Pyramid of Giza is the oldest and largest of the three pyramids in the Giza Necropolis bordering what is now El Giza, Egypt. It is the oldest of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World, and the only one to remain largely intact...
core stones and head of the Great Sphinx are of the "Member III" stratum
Europe
British Isles
- Ashford Black Marble
Ashford Black Marble is the name given to a dark limestone, quarried from mines near Ashford-in-the-Water, in Derbyshire, England. Once cut, turned and polished, its shiny black surface is highly decorative. Ashford Black Marble is a very fine-grained sedimentary rock, and is not a true marble in...
(not a "true marble")
- Aymestry Limestone
The Aymestry Limestone is an inconstant limestone deposited in a warm shallow sea near the eastern margin of the Iapetus Ocean. It occurs in England in the Ludlow series of Silurian rocks, between the Upper and Lower Ludlow Shales. It derives its name from Aymestry, Herefordshire, where it may be...
- Bath Stone
Bath Stone is an Oolitic Limestone comprising granular fragments of calcium carbonate. Originally obtained from the Combe Down and Bathampton Down Mines under Combe Down, Somerset, England, its warm, honey colouring gives the World Heritage City of Bath, England its distinctive appearance...
- Blackrock (geology)
Blackrock is a type of limestone, with its name originating from a place in Somerset where it occurs. It is not always necessarily black, often a dark grey color....
- Blisworth Limestone
The Blisworth Limestone is a stratum of limestone of the Bathonian stage, found in the Jurassic ridge which extends north and south through England. It was laid down in the shallows of the Jurassic sea and is part of the more widely defined Great Oölite Series. It is also known as the Great Oolite...
- Carboniferous limestone
Carboniferous Limestone is a term used to describe a variety of different types of limestone occurring widely across Great Britain and Ireland which were deposited during the Dinantian epoch of the Carboniferous period. They were formed between 363 and 325 million years ago...
- Charlestown limestone
Charlestown Limestone was quarried in Charlestown, Fife, Scotland. The limestone was fired in the kilns of the neighbouring village Limekilns and ship from here along the Scottish east coast...
- Corallian Limestone
Corallian Limestone is a coralliferous sedimentary rock, laid down in Jurassic times. It is a hard variety of "coral rag". Building stones from this geological structure tend to be irregular in shape. It is often found close to seams of Portland Limestone...
- Headington stone
Headington stone is a limestone from the Headington Quarry area of Oxford, England.- Geology :Around 160 million years ago, during the Late Jurassic period, Britain was located further south and was submerged beneath a subtropical sea. The warm conditions meant that coral reefs could flourish. When...
- Coniston Limestone
Coniston Limestone is the sedimentary rock formation around Coniston in the English Lake District, and forms part of the Windermere Supergroup. It is late Ordovician or possibly early Silurian in age and rests unconformably upon the Borrowdale Volcanic Group of rocks, which subsided beneath the...
- Ketton Stone
Ketton stone is a Jurassic oolitic limestone used as a building stone for many centuries. It is named after the village of Ketton in Rutland, England....
- Lincolnshire limestone
The Lincolnshire limestone is a feature of the Inferior Oolite Series of the Middle Jurassic strata of eastern England. It was formed around 165 million years ago, in a shallow, warm sea on the margin of the London Platform and has estuarine beds above and below it...
- Portland limestone
- Portland Admiralty Roach
Portland Admiralty Roach is a kind of stone from the Isle of Portland used to construct "The Cobb", the well-known seawall at Lyme Regis in Dorset....
- Portland Bowers Basebed
- Portland Bowers Lynham Whitbed
- Portland Bowers Saunders Whitbed
- Portland Grove Whitbed
- Portland Hard Blue
- Portland Independent Basebed
- Portland Independent Bottom Whitbed
- Portland Independent Top Whitbed
Portland Independent Top Whitbed is the variety of Portland stone used to build the Ashton Memorial in Lancaster. It originates from Independent quarries on the Isle of Portland, Dorset, England....
- Portland New Independent Whitbed
United States
- Coquina
Coquina is a sedimentary rock that is composed either wholly or almost entirely of the transported, abraded, and mechanically sorted fragments of the shells of either molluscs, trilobites, brachiopods, or other invertebrates. For a sediment to be considered to be a coquina, the average size of the...
- Indiana limestone
Indiana Limestone, also known as Bedford Limestone is a common regional term for Salem limestone, a geological formation primarily quarried in south central Indiana between Bloomington and Bedford....
- Harrodsburg limestone
Harrodsburg Limestone is a member of the Sanders Group of Indiana Limestone, of Mississippian age. It was named for Harrodsburg, Indiana in southern Monroe County, Indiana by T. C. Hopkins and C. E. Siebenthal . It is made up primarily of calcarenite and calcirudite...
- Kaibab Limestone
The Kaibab is a geologic formation that is spread across the U.S. states of northern Arizona, southern Utah, east central Nevada and southeast California. This geologic unit is part of the Park City Group in Nevada and Utah and is sometimes locally classified as a geologic group in Utah...
- Kasota limestone
Kasota limestone or simply, 'Kasota stone,' is a dolomitic limestone found in southern Minnesota. This sedimentary rock is part of the Oneota Dolostone Formation of southern Minnesota and is approximately 450 million years old...
- St. Louis Limestone
The St. Louis Limestone is a large geologic formation covering a wide area of the midwest of the United States. It is named after an exposure at St. Louis, Missouri. It consists of sedimentary limestone with scattered chert beds, including the heavily chertified Lost River Chert Bed in the Horse...
- Keystone (limestone)
Keystone refers to a type of limestone, or coral rag, quarried in the Florida Keys, in particular from Windley Key fossil quarry, which is now a State Park of Florida...
- Greenbrier Limestone
The Greenbrier Limestone, also known locally as the "Big Lime", is an extensive limestone unit deposited during the Middle Mississippian Epoch , part of the Carboniferous Period. This rock stratum is present below ground in much of West Virginia and neighboring Kentucky, and extends somewhat into...
- Ste. Genevieve Limestone
The Ste. Genevieve Limestone is a geologic formation named for Ste. Genevieve, Missouri where it is exposed and was first described. It is a thick-bedded limestone that overlies the St. Louis Limestone. Both are Mississippian in age and part of the Meramecian series.Members of the Ste...
- Madison Limestone
The Madison Limestone is a thick sequence of mostly carbonate rocks of Mississippian age in the Rocky Mountain and Great Plains areas of western United States. The rocks serve as an important aquifer as well as an oil reservoir in places...
- Bear Gulch Limestone
The Bear Gulch Limestone in Montana is a fossiliferous lagerstätte, a limestone layer laid down in the Mississippian epoch of the Carboniferous period, about 318 mya. This lens of limestone was laid down in a surrounding matrix that indicates a landscape of mudflats and braided channels in fresh...
- Miami Limestone
- Tennessee marble
Tennessee marble is a type of crystalline limestone found primarily in East Tennessee, in the southeastern United States. Long esteemed by architects and builders for its pinkish-gray color and the ease with which it is polished, this stone has been used in the construction of numerous notable...
(not a "true marble")
- Anamosa Limestone
Anamosa Limestone is a dolomitic limestone quarried out of Stone City, Iowa, which is located along the Wapsipinicon River about two miles west of Anamosa, Iowa. It is distinguished by its uniform texture, color, and banding, its durability and most of all by its distinct veining. This distinctive...
Canada
- Algonquin Limestone
- Eramosa
The Eramosa is a Silurian stratigraphic unit exposed along the Niagara Escarpment Niagara_Escarpment in Ontario and western New York State. In the late nineteenth century it was an important source of building stone in Hamilton, Ancaster and Waterdown , and in the late twentieth century quarries...
Limestone / Eramosa Marble
- Hope Bay Limestone
- Mara Limestone
- Senesun Limestone
Generic limestone categories
- Coral rag
Coral rag is a rubbly limestone composed of ancient coral reef material. The term also refers to the building blocks quarried from these strata which are an important local building material in areas such as the east African coast and the Caribbean basin .It is also the name of a member — the Coral...
- Shelly limestone
Shelly limestone is a highly fossiliferous limestone, composed of a number of fossilized organisms such as brachiopods, bryozoans, crinoids, sponges, corals and mollusks. It varies in color, texture and hardness...
- Lithographic limestone
Lithographic limestone is hard limestone that is sufficiently fine-grained, homogeneous and defect free to be used for lithography. Geologists use the term lithographic texture to refer to a grain size under 1/250 mm...
- Chalk
Chalk is a soft, white, porous sedimentary rock, a form of limestone composed of the mineral calcite. Calcite is calcium carbonate or CaCO3. It forms under reasonably deep marine conditions from the gradual accumulation of minute calcite plates shed from micro-organisms called coccolithophores....
- Travertine
Travertine is a form of limestone deposited by mineral springs, especially hot springs. Travertine often has a fibrous or concentric appearance and exists in white, tan, and cream-colored varieties. It is formed by a process of rapid precipitation of calcium carbonate, often at the mouth of a hot...
- Tufa
Tufa is a variety of limestone, formed by the precipitation of carbonate minerals from ambient temperature water bodies. Geothermally heated hot-springs sometimes produce similar carbonate deposits known as travertine...