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 
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