85 



two ends. Sometimes a type would reach a culmination or highest point, 

 beyond whicli it could not advance. Then a degeneration would occur 

 along side lines, oi', in many instances, even total extinction of the race or 

 group. Finally, after the planet was hoary with age, a race of animal 

 parasites evolved from the lower forms, whose variations were ever con- 

 centrated toward the head or cephalic region. During untold ages their 

 brains slowly but surely increased in size until, in time, they became 

 possessed of the power of reason and of abstract thought. In that age 

 the "prince of parasites" was born. From then on he began to rule not 

 only the other animal and plant parasites about him, but to discover and 

 control the powerful forces of nature, heretofore wholly latent. As he 

 grew in l>rain power, he grew in greed, in egoism. He came to think that 

 the planet, on which he was but a pai'asite, was created for him alone; 

 that all otlior plants and animals were put there for his especial benefit, 

 though many of them out-dated him by millions of years. He began to 

 modify the surface of the planet in all ways possible — to change, as it 

 were, its every aspect to conform to his ideas. He imagined, vain creat- 

 ure that he was, that he could improve upon the works of Nature. In 

 time he divided up the entire land surface of the planet by using some- 

 times imaginary lines and again natiu'al boundaries. Acres and sections, 

 townships and counties, states and republics, kingdoms and empires were 

 the terms he used to denote bis subdivisions, and over all lands, and even 

 seas, he proclaimed himself chief ruler. For that planet is the earth. 

 That "prince of parasites" is Man. 



To 36,350 square miles of the earth's surface, lying between the imag- 

 inary lines 37° 41' and 41° 46' north latitude, and between 84° 44' and 

 88° 0' west longitude, man, in time, gave the name "Indiana." How 

 came this area to be where it is? Of what kind of matter is its surface 

 composed? What was its condition at the time of the advent of the white 

 I'ace? These are questions which should be of interest to every resident 

 of the Hoosier State. 



The oldest known rocks on the American continent are those of 

 Archfean Time laid down during the Azoic or lifeless seon of the earth. 

 They are known as the Laurentian System of Rocks and consist mainly 

 of coarse granites, thick-bedded gneisses and syenites, serpentines, schists 

 and beds of modified sandstones, limestones and clays. They were 

 formed from the debris of other rocks still older than themselves; these in 

 their turn having been derived ages ago from those original igneous or 



