Democratic Sentinel, Volume 16, Number 51, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 6 January 1893 — Do Rocks Grow ? [ARTICLE]

Do Rocks Grow ?

The question in the headline is often asked, and not infrequently by scholarly people, too. By way of a general answer to all such questioners I would say that the best authorities have come to this conclusion ) That rocks do not grow in the sense that plants do. They may increase in size by means of accretion, and they may also undergo other changes. Old sea beds lifted up and exposed for ages become stratified beds of sandstone or limestone; volcanic ashes or lava strewn over hills and plains become tufa hard enough for building stone, and the pebbly shores of rivers and smaller streams may sometimes change into cotfglomerates. The simple mineral, however, does grow, especially when it takes upon itself the form of a crystal. A sparkling prism of quartz increases from an atom to monster crystals of varying length and size by what geologists know as a “process of addition and assimilation.” This process is wonderfully slow, but with a mathematical exactness that is a surprise to persons even “well up” in the science of geology. In one sense stones grow; in another they do not. Tho crystal, may become longer or larger, but the boulder on the roadside will not increase 9 hair’s breadth in length or width in the next 10,000 years.—[St. Louis Republic.