58 E. J. CHAPMAN ON CRYPTOMORPHISM IN ITS 
on that of all the components of the substance. The sulphides orpiment and sphalerite 
(zinc blende) may be referred to, in illustration. In the first, one component, arsenic, is 
normally an opaque, cleayable, comparatively hard, metallic body ; whilst the other com- 
ponent, sulphur, is a soft, translucent, highly inflammable body, in its known normal con- 
dition. As the mineral orpiment, resulting from their combination, is also a soft, trans- 
lucent, and strikingly inflammable body, its sulphur component may be assumed to retain, 
or to retain essentially, the normal sulphur-condition, whilst the arsenic has evidently 
undergone a marked cryptomorphic change. Geologically, as well as in their mineral 
characters, native sulphur * and orpiment are in many respects closely alike, and thus 
they might legitimately be placed together in a natural classification ; whereas native 
arsenic is in no way related, as a mineral, to orpiment; nor has it anything in 
common with native sulphur. To separate, therefore, native sulphur from orpiment, 
and to place native sulphur, 

because the one is a simple and the other a compound body 
and native arsenic in one and the same class, as so commonly done, solely because they 
happen to be simple bodies—may in some cases be convenient, but is in no case a natural 
collocation. In the substance taken as our second illustration, the natural zinc-sulphide, 
sphalerite or blende, both components must have passed by their mutual contact into some 
unknown cryptomorphic condition, in which their inflammable nature and other characters 
have become entirely changed. 
Some degree of light may perhaps be thrown on the cryptomorphic condition of bodies 
in combination, by our knowledge of the typical conditions of natural bodies generally, 
when uncombined. These conditions (as regards solid forms of occurrence) are essentially 
the following : 
. The ductile condition : e. g., native gold, native silver, Xe. 
. The cleavable condition : e. g., native bismuth, native arsenic, &e. 
. The phyllid (or soft, scaly, unctuous, refractory) condition: e. g., graphite. 
. The phlogid (or inflammable, thionoid) condition : e. g., native sulphur. 
. The stony condition: e. g., diamond. 
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These conditions—and probably others of an intermediate or subordinate character, as 
the magnetic condition, the sub-metallic condition, the salt or soluble condition, &c—are 
capable of assumption, it is at least probable, by every elementary body: although only 
cryptomorphically, it would seem, in most instances. If this inference be admitted, it may 
serve to explain the very remarkable resemblances presented by certain minerals. Graphite 
and molybdenite, for example, in almost all external properties are closely alike—as seen 
in both their foliated and their crypto-crystalline or scaly-compact varieties, in their peculiar 
softness and flexibility, their black and lustrous streak, their infusibility and slow volatili- 
zation, their deflagrescence with nitre, and other characters, by which the one is often 
mistaken for the other, even by a comparatively practised eye. In composition, on the 
other hand, they are entirely different: graphite, as well known, being a form of carbon, 
whilst molybdenite.is a bisulphide of molybdenum. Now, carbon presents two widely- 

* Tt has become the custom among mineralogists, now-a-days, to drop the term “native” in reference to 
simple substances; but the term should properly be retained as a distinction between the substance in its natural 
state of occurrence, and the often very different condition of the substance as artificially obtained. 
