TIME AND CHANGE 
the rock eroded. Nearly all the wonderful and beau- 
tiful sculpturing of the rocks in the West and South- 
west is in rocks of comparatively recent date. 
Can we say that all the organic matter of our 
time is from preéxisting organic matter? one or- 
ganism torn down to build up another? that the be- 
ginning of the series was as great as the end? There 
may have been as much matter in a state of vital 
organization in Carboniferous or in Cretaceous times 
as in our own, but there is certainly more now than 
in early Paleozoic times. Yet every grain of this 
matter has existed somewhere in some form for all 
time. Or we might ask if all the wealth of our day 
is from preéxisting wealth — one fortune pulled 
down to build up another, — too often the case, 
it is true, — thus passing the accumulated wealth 
along from one generation to another. On the con- 
trary, has there not been a steady gain of that we 
call wealth through the ingenuity and the industry 
of man directed towards the latent wealth of the 
earth? Ina parallel manner has there been a gain 
in the bulk of the secondary rocks through the ac- 
tion of the world-building forces directed to the sea, 
the air, and the preéxisting rocks. Had there been 
no gain, the fact would suggest the ill luck of a man 
investing his capital in business and turning it over 
and over, and having no more money at the end than 
he had in the beginning. 
Nothing is in the sedimentary rock that was not 
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