lOG Miscellaneous, 



oxygenated acids and the alkaloids, being capable of separation from 

 their solutions in the crystalline form ; but that the elementary 

 organs, the cells themselves, could pass over directly (and, indeed, 

 their firmer part, or membrane) into the crystalline form, and in this 

 way establish direct intermediate terms between organic and inor- 

 ganic forms, might justly surprise us, because, in the first place, we 

 did not suspect it, and because there is another side of philosophical 

 contemplation which regards the origin of the plant not as a pro- 

 cess of crystallization, but, on the contrary, as a process of cell- 

 formation. The cell-crystalloids occurring in organic nature seem 

 to repeat the forms of the inorganic crystallized bodies in the same 

 way as the leaf-forms of one group of plants repeat themselves in 

 another, whilst the two are perfectly different as regards the struc- 

 ture of the fruit, spores, &c. In both cases, both in organic and 

 in inorganic nature, these crystalline forms are certainly dependent 

 on their chemical composition. But that they are so renders the 

 simple fact one of great promise, because, to express it in a single 

 word, it follows therefrom that matter and form are two inseparable 

 quantities. 



The organic crystalloids (v. e. hollow bodies, in contradistinction 

 to the solid inorganic crj'stals) are in most cases the membranes of 

 young cells still consisting of highly nitrogenous proteiniform com- 

 pounds ; and these not unfrequently repeat the sharp-edged angular 

 forms so closely that one seems to have real crystals before one. 

 As I learn directly from Karsten, they appear very beautifully as 

 rhombohedra in the weU-known Para nut, and as octahedra in the 

 seeds of Eicimis and in the juice of Jatropha curcas. It may be 

 that the forms of these crystalloids are in part dependent on the 

 nature of the inorganic basic matters which form chemical com- 

 pounds with a definite albuminous matter. But cells which have 

 already given off the whole of the nitrogen from their membrane, 

 and, like cellulose, have passed off into more highly carbonized 

 compounds, also occur in the crystalline form. 



When Karsten had once called attention to them, similar crystal- 

 loids were also found abundantly by other observers ; for the com- 

 binations mentioned in the last paragraph but one, especially by 

 Hartig, and these, were measured and discussed by Kadlkofer and 

 Nageli. Of the combinations of the preceding paragraph, exam- 

 ples were detected only by Karsten — namely, non-azotized, highly 

 carbonized cell-membranes. He found them, for example, in the 

 cells of the seed-lobes of our common yellow lupine (Lupinus 

 luteus) ; the crystalloids which make their appearance in this in 

 the form of tables were formerly regarded as proteine-crjstals, 

 which, according to Karsten, they are not, as they do not acquire 

 the well-known changes of colour, either with iodine or with Mil- 

 Ion's mercurial salt. According to Karsten, these trapezoidal tables 

 are the nuclear cells of the tissue- cells of the seed-lobes. They 

 enlarge up to the time of germination, and begin to dissolve after 

 tlie cotyledons push forth from their envelope into the air. All the 

 cellules occurring with these crystalloids are coloured by the above- 



