- posed. Crystalline forms are very widely distributed.
They are, in a measure, universal. Matter has a decided tendency to assume these forms whenever the physical forces which it obeys act with order and regularity, and when their action is undisturbed by accidental occurrences. In the same way, too, living forms are only possible in regulated environments, under normal conditions, protected from cataclysms and convulsions of nature.
The possession of a specific form is the most significant feature of an organized being. Its tendency, from the time it begins to develop from the germ, is toward the acquirement of that form. The progressive manner in which it seeks to realize its architectural plan in spite of the obstacles and difficulties that arise—healing its wounds, repairing its mutilations—all this, in the eyes of the philosophical biologist, forms what is perhaps the most striking characteristic of a living being, that which best shows its unity and its individuality. This property of organogenesis seems pre-eminently the vital property. It is not so, however, for crystalline bodies possess it in an almost equal degree.
The parallel between the crystal and a living being has been often drawn. I will not reproduce it here in detail. My sole desire, after sketching its principal features, is to call attention to the new information that has been brought out by recent investigations.
Organization of Crystals. Views of Haüy, Delafosse, Bravais, and of Wallerant.—In botany, zoology, and crystallography we understand by form an assemblage of material constituents co-ordinated in a definite system—i.e., the organization itself. The body of man, for example, is an edifice in which sixty
