66 On Crystallography, 



may be reduced to two ; one of which includes animals and 

 vegetables under the common name of organic beings, and 

 the other comprehends minerals, or inorganic beings*. 



The manner in which the beings grow or are produced, 

 which are comprised within these two great divisions, pre- 

 sents the most striking difference by which they can be di- 

 stinguished. In animals and plants their growth takes place 

 by the simultaneous development of all the parts of the in- 

 dividual, in consequence of the nourishment received by the 

 .organs destined to elaborate it. Every thing which contri- 

 .butes to the increase of volume is the eflect of internal me- 

 chanism ; or, if new parts be formed externally, as in trees 

 which send out branches and leaves, these parts are only 

 productions of the peculiar stibstancQ of the individuals, 

 which, assisted by the action of the nutritive juices, are de- 

 veloped in the same way. In minerals, on the contrary, the 

 increase in volume takes place by an addition of new mole- 

 cules, which are applied to the surface of the body, in such 

 a way that every tiling which existed at each period of growth, 

 remaining fixed, presents on all sides a basis, as it were, for 

 the materials which arrive for continuing the edifice. On 



* We find in the bowels of the globe, earthy or metallic stones, the 

 'matter of which, by succeeding to organic bodies, such as shells, is mo^ 

 delled in the cavities which the latter had originally occupied. What is 

 called pchijied wuud also presents an apparent conversion of an organic bo^ 

 into a mineral. Lastly, organic bodies which have undergone only slight 

 alterations have been called /o.«!i' shells 3ndi fossil ivood. Several modern au- 

 thors, considering all bodies imbedded in the earth as in the regions of mine- 

 ralogy, have substituted the word fossil for mineral, and some Jiave applied 

 the latter to metallic ores only. The same authors have denominated the 

 science of fossils oryctogmisy. We have thought it right to conform to the 

 ancient language, because the expression mineral, by the side of vegetable and 

 aiiimal, makes us perceive more clearly the gradation of the three great col- 

 lections of -beings which have been denominated the kingdoms of Nature. We 

 j-cgard the study of fossils, propei-ly so called, as an accessary so far a« 

 mineralogy is concerned, inasmuch as the consequences which we may de- 

 rive from this study relative to the history of the globe rather spring from 

 peolo'n'. We knotv besides, that fossils, at least those which have been pri- 

 mitively in the animal kingdom, have in another point of view occupied the 

 attention of several cc'-i. rated zoologists, and among others Cuvier, who has, 

 as it were, recomposcd the bodies of animal-, of which we find no living 

 analogies, and restored to modern science species of antiquity which seemed 

 ,to have been for ever lost, 



one 



