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Dieter Schenk, 50, is the managing director of Zinco GmbH, a Swabian company that installs roof gardens atop buildings.

Throughout, there are wittily pragmatic, original descriptions of minerals, gases, and metals, as in this description of zinc: “Zinc, zinco, Zink: laundry tubs are made of it, it’s an element that doesn’t say much to the imagination, it’s gray and its salts are colorless, it’s not toxic, it doesn’t provide gaudy chromatic reactions—in other words, it’s a boring element.”

“You live in Zinco,” he said, referring to the corrugated metal that constitutes many Bedouin walls.

Zinco, zing′kō, n. a familiar abbreviation for zincograph.—v.i. to produce a plate for printing by the zincographic process.

In the case of newspaper work, however, where haste in getting ready for the press is necessarily the prime consideration, the flat and very slightly-indented surface of the zinco block is found to be unsuited to the requirements.