THE FRIENDLY ROCKS 



and black, hard and soft, coarse and fine, red and 

 gray, yet all in the same line of descent all dating 

 back to the same old Adam rock of the Azoic period. 

 Time and circumstance, conditions of water and air, 

 of sea and land, seem to have made the difference. 

 As the races of men were modified and stamped by 

 their environment, so the diverse family of rocks 

 reflects the influence of both local and general con- 

 ditions. When analyzed, their constituents do not 

 differ so much. As in the different races of men we 

 find the same old flesh and blood and bones, so in the 

 rocks we find the same quartz sand and compounds 

 of lime and iron and potash and magnesia and feld- 

 spar, yet in quantity and character what a world of 

 difference! How differently they are bedded, how 

 differently they weather, how differently they sub- 

 mit to the hammer and chisel of the mason and the 

 stonecutter! Some rocks seem feminine, smooth, 

 fine-grained, fragile, the product of deep, still water; 

 others are more masculine, coarse, tough, the prod- 

 uct of waters more or less turbid or shallow. 



The purity of the strain of the different breeds 

 of rocks is remarkable; about as little crossing or 

 mingling among the different systems as there is 

 among the different species of animals: considering 

 the blind warring and chaos of the elements out of 

 which they came, one can but wonder at the homo- 

 geneity of the different kinds. They are usually as 

 uniform as if their production had been carefully 

 61 



