THE DEVELOPMENT OF MINERALS. 401 



study of which is embryology. And who knows whether the embry- 

 ology of organic bodies, that science still wrapped in so much dark- 

 ness, may not be illuminated with an unanticipated light when it shall 

 be able to take for the basis of its investigations the results furnished by 

 the embryology of inorganic bodies ? MM. Monnier and Vogt have 

 already imitated, by means of inorganic salts reacting upon one another, 

 the forms of organic cells, and in a work, the summary of which was 

 published in 1882 in the " Comptes Rendus " of the French Academy 

 of Sciences, under the title of " The Artificial Production of the Forms 

 of the Organic Elements," they have examined in detail these ex- 

 tremely delicate phenomena which carry us back toward the element- 

 ary origin of beings. 



All beings are subject to certain general laws. Experiments in 

 supersaturation show the action of continuity exercised by the parent 

 upon the descendant which resembles it, and the conditions of exist- 

 ence, if not identical, are at least comparable for all. The crystal, in 

 the solution into which it is plunged, increases by taking up, by means 

 of a labor inherent to its nature, the particles which are suitable to it, 

 and which become thus the food upon which it is supported. The 

 struggle for existence is universal. Henri Sainte-Claire Deville an- 

 nounced the application of this thought to the mineral kingdom when, 

 pointing to the iron tubes in his laboratory in which crystals were 

 alternately heated and cooled, he remarked, sententiously, " The large 

 crystals eat up the little ones." All bodies are subject to the action 

 of ambient conditions. Among these incessant variations, these recip- 

 rocal influences of the medium upon the being and of the being upon 

 the medium, are certain situations of greater stability, or positions 

 of momentary equilibrium in which the body seems to persist, when 

 an effort, a more considerable change, is needed to displace it. This 

 equilibrium is not absolute. Susceptibility constantly exists, but it is 

 manifested more or less clearly, so that we can define mineralogy as 

 the study of the effects produced by different causes upon minerals. 

 Sometimes a relaxation is apparent, a comparative retardation, a slum- 

 ber, a lethargy, a catalepsy, a condition of real or apparent death. It 

 is hard to express our idea by using such words as death or destruc- 

 tion, which possess a common acceptation that we are obliged, perforce, 

 to stretch. " If we dry or deprive of heat certain inferior beings, frogs, 

 aquatic insects, or some eggs," says Claus, in his " Zoology," " we can 

 interrupt the vital functions for months and years, and still restore the 

 life by returning the water and the heat. While there are some seeds 

 that lose their germinating qualities after a few days, melon-seeds and 

 beans are known to have grown after thirty or forty years, and even 

 seeds of heliotrope and lucern that were found in the Gallo-Roman 

 tombs, and were therefore fifteen or sixteen hundred years old, have 

 been made to grow." The crystal, withdrawn from the mother-solu- 

 tion, and deprived of food, ceases to develop ; it continues the same 

 vol. xxix. 26 



