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Show 150. Studies reveals his suppressed desire to present a theory of their creation which could not be justified in purely mechanical terms. He wished to see their origin in "seeds so to speak which produce domes," and stated in another early hypothesis, "Domes appear to be concretionary in their nature appearing as immense balls partly or wholly buried in undist. [urbed] granite." Here is an implicit linking of theological and scientific vision, which can be traced to his background as a botanist. Wood's Botany, which he carried in his botanical excursion to Florida, and which probably came to California, makes this link explicit. Under the heading "No Accidents or Caprice in Nature," Wood announced that "The seed of the plant is its redemption. . . . in the grain of the mustard there is literally a faith. Plants may teach us lessons in sacred things." Thus Muir spoke of a rock as "conceived and ripe," and described its weathering as "the ripening of one of its cleavage planes, just as the valves of seeds ripen, open, and fall." He had written in his journal, "While the snow-flowers for Yosemite glaciers were growing in the depths of the sky, the stones for Yosemite temple-walls were growing in the crystalline depths of the mountains." When he described the baptism of a monumental dome into Sierran light, he used Mount Starr King as his example of redemption. Rock seemed to blossom into the sky: The beautiful conoid, Starr King, the loftiest and most perfect of the group, was one of the first rocky |