TIME AND CHANGE | 
major part in the genealogy of the subsequent strati- 
fied rocks, it would be folly to deny. But it seems to 
me that chemical and cosmic processes, working 
through the air and the water, have contributed 
more than they have been credited with. 
It looks as if in all cases when the soil is carried 
to the sea-bottom as sediment, and again, during 
the course of ages, consolidated into rocks, the 
rocks thus formed have exceeded in bulk the rocks 
that gave them birth. Something analogous to 
vital growth takes place. It seems as if the original 
granite centres set the world-building forces at 
work. They served as nuclei around which the 
materials gathered. These rocks bred other rocks, 
and these still others, and yet others, till the frame- 
work of the land was fairly established. They were 
like the pioneer settlers who plant homes here and 
there in the wilderness, and then in due time all the 
land is peopled. 
The granite is the Adam rock, and through a long 
line of descent the major part of all the other rocks 
directly or indirectly may be traced. Thus the gran- 
ite begot the Algonquin, the Algonquin begot the 
Cambrian, the Cambrian begot the Silurian, the 
Silurian begot the Devonian, and so on up through 
the Carboniferous, the Permian, the Mesozoic rocks, 
the Tertiary rocks, to the latest Quaternary de- 
posit. But the curious thing about it all is the enor- 
mous progeny from so small a beginning; the rocks 
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