With a little courage, though, and a bit of skill, you can unearth its delectable treasure -- "scale by scale we undress its delight and we eat the peaceful flesh of its green heart".
But, when doing it on a large scale, treasure salvage can be a very expensive business and governments always take their part, as do investors.
War is what we invest our time, energy, and treasure in on a scale that is, in its own way, remarkable, even if it seldom registers in this country.
Europeans will no longer be explorers; they will not adventure across unknown seas to steal others' treasure, they will not scale the highest mountains to plant flags, nor will they look west or east to decide what to think and how to behave internationally.
Its standouts include Tom Kotik's "Buried Treasure," an exact, full-scale replica of the top four feet, chimneys, bricks and all, of the Brooklyn brownstone in which the artist grew up.
Confronted with the demographic reality of retirees who are living longer and the prospect of waves of baby-boom retirees, the governments of France, Germany and Austria are finding it necessary to forge strategies to scale back treasured social benefits like pensions.
ANDREA PANICO, a jewelry designer, often finds that small-scale treasures grow out of studying larger things.
He then carried his speckled treasure to an old-fashioned scale, its arrow pointing to "large," "extra large" or "jumbo".
"Though we knew that offerings made to the temple by devotees for the last 500 years were lying in these secret cellars, the scale of the treasure has definitely surprised us," temple official Hari Kumar told the Guardian.
Charrier amassed the Treasure secretly, without making photographs or scale drawings or field notes.
"The houses may be kind of plain looking, not spectacular, but to me at least, they are a treasure," Mr. Strupe, 47, who repairs scales, said last week.
