Rocks are those things you pick up on long walks, such as when exploring Antarctica. A collection of rocks was recovered long after the British expedition of 1901 had perished. Following analysis, the stones and the fossilized vegetation revealed a story of Earth turned on its head. It was fires, not The Flood, that had led to the extinction of 90% of all living species during the Permian era 250 million years back when the frozen continent was a tropical jungle.
A rock becomes a stone when it fits easily into the hand, pressing into consciousness the vast ages and events since formation underground or beneath the sea. It is a record of its making, with a granularity that can describe weather conditions and seasons, atmospheres, polarity changes, and the combinations of countless chemistries; as often as not, they involve the organic world of bacteria and other cellular entities, as...