How happens it that we reverence the stones which fall from another planet, and not the stones which belong to this?

"How happens it that we reverence the stones which fall from another planet, and not the stones which belong to this, - another globe, not this, - heaven, and not earth?  Are not our stones . . . as good as the aerolite [meteorite] at Mecca?  Is not our broad back-door-stone as good as any corner-stone of heaven?"

Henry David Thoreau  

Photo: Quartzite on a misty day in the Snowy Range, WY; August 23, 2014