- stances more or less complete, in which its gems
appear simultaneously. This is what happens for betol at about the temperatute of 10°. These circumstances are those of the labile zone or zone of spontaneous generation.
Crystals of Glycerine.—We may go a step further. Let us suppose, with L. Errera, that we have a liquid in a state of metastable equilibrium, whose labile equilibrium is as yet unknown. This is what actually occurs for a very widely known body, glycerine. We do not know under what conditions glycerine crystallizes spontaneously. If we cool it, it becomes viscous; we cannot obtain its crystals in that way. It was not found in crystals until 1867. In that year, in a cask sent from Vienna to London during winter, crystallised glycerine was found, and Crookes showed these crystals to the Chemical Society of London. What circumstances had determined their formation? We knew not then, and we know not now. It may be observed that this case of spontaneous generation of the crystals of glycerine has not remained the solitary instance. M. Henninger has noted the accidental formation of glycerine crystals in a manufactory in St. Denis.
It may be remarked that this crystalline species appeared, as living species may have done, at a given moment in an environment in which a favourable chance combined the necessary conditions for its production. It is also quite comparable to the creation of a living species; for having once appeared we have been able to perpetuate it. The crystalline individuals of 1867 have had a posterity. They have been sown in glycerine in a state of superfusion, and there they reproduced themselves. These
