FUNDAMENTAL FOP.MS. 333 



nation, and is as perfectly simple in its structure as any 

 crystal, which consists of a single inorganic combination, 

 for example, of a metallic salt or of a silicate of the earths 

 and alkalies. 



As naturalists believed in differences in the inner struc- 

 ture or composition, so they supposed themselves able to 

 find complete differences in the external forms of organisms 

 and anorgana, especially in the mathematically determinable 

 crystalline forms of the latter. Certainly crystallization 

 is pre-eminently a quality of the so-called anorgana. 

 Crystals are Hmited by plane surfaces, which meet in 

 straight lines and at certain measurable angles. Animal 

 and vegetable forms, on the contrary, seem at first sight to 

 admit of no such geometrical determination. They are for 

 the most part limited by curved surfaces and crooked lines, 

 which meet at variable angles. But in recent times we 

 have become acquainted, among Radiolaria ^^ and among 

 many other Protista, with a large number of lower 

 organisms, whose body, in the same way as crystals, may be 

 traced to a mathematically determinable fundamental form, 

 and whose form in its whole, as well as in its parts, is 

 bounded by definite geometrically determinable planes and 

 angles. In my general doctrine of Fundamental Forms, or 

 Promorphology, I have given detailed proofs of this, and at 

 the same time established a general system of forms, the ideal 

 stereometrical type-forms, which explain the real forms of 

 inorganic crystals, as well as of organic individuals (Gen. 

 Morph. i. 375-574). Moreover, there are also perfectly 

 amorphous organisms, like the Monera, Amoeba, etc., which 

 change their forms every moment, and in which we are as 

 little able to point out a definite fundamental form as in 



