PREFACE 
TT SUSPECT that in this volume my reader will 
feel that I have given him a stone when he asked 
for bread, and his feeling in this respect will need no 
apology. I fear there is more of the matter of hard 
science and of scientific speculation in this collec- 
tion than of spiritual and esthetic nutriment; but 
I do hope the volume is not entirely destitute of the 
latter. If I have not in some degree succeeded in 
transmuting my rocks into a kind of wholesome 
literary bread, or, to vary the figure, in turning them 
into a soil in which some green thing or flower of 
human interest and emotion may take root and 
grow, then, indeed, have I come short of the end 
I had in view. 
I am well aware that my own i in 
far outruns my knowledge, but if I can in some de- 
gree kindle that interest in my reader, I shall be 
putting him on the road to a fuller knowledge than 
I possess. As with other phases of nature, I have 
probably loved the rocks more than I have studied 
them. In_my_youth I delighted in lingering about | 
and beneath the ledges of my native hills, partly in 
the spirit of adventure and a boy’s love of the wild, 
and partly with an eye to their curious forms, and 
Vv on 
