THE PROGRESSIVE ATTRIBUTES OF INANIMATE 

 MATTER, AND THE PURPOSIVE OPERATIONS 

 OF ORGANIC STRUCTURES. 



(Read before the Cincinnati Natural History Society, Aug. 5, 1879.) 



Long before algse, mosses, ferns, and other plant- 

 like forms appeared in sea or on land, floral shapes 

 had been created in frost-work and congealed water. 

 The vegetable form is one which did not originate in 

 organization, hut in forces governing crystallization. 

 Fronds were traced in crystals of ice before they ever 

 grew. From this it would seem that the forces or 

 attributes of inanimate matter are, in some of their 

 activities, prospective something higher being fore- 

 shadowed by them. It is possible that the elegant 

 shapes we behold on the window pane in winter are 

 due to electrical influences, yet electricity is an attri- 

 bute of inanimate matter. The outlines of frost-work 

 vary from time to time, and seem to be governed in 

 shape by hygrometric and magnetic conditions, yet 

 this does not smother the spontaneous inquiry in re- 

 gard to the origin of cryptogamic forms first fashioned 

 in ice. The crystallographer may assert that the out- 

 lines of lichens and ferns in frost-work are a necessity; 

 that it is a law of crystallization that the vapor of 

 water in a freezing state must congeal in just such 

 forms, and in no other. Well, to be told that quartz 

 crystallizes in hexagons, and by a law or force inher- 

 ent in the material, it can not congeal or crystallize in 



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