j2 LIFE : OUTLINES OF GENERAL BIOLOGY 



animal. But the crystal's "regeneration" is passive, from without, 

 and homogeneous; that of the organism is active, from within, and 

 heterogeneous. 



Another supposed resemblance that has been emphasised is the 

 power of lying latent that may be seen in crystal and creature 

 alike. The seed of a plant may remain dry for a decennium, but 

 sow it and it will germmate. The egg or the half-developed embryo 

 of an ajiimal may lie unchanged for many years, but give it the 

 appropriate environment and it will resume its activity. Entire 

 animals like "vinegar-eels" may remain without hint of life for 

 many years; but it is only necessary to put them in their proper 

 surroundings to sec them revive and multiply. Everyone knows 

 how the sjx)res of microbes may lie low for a long time and be 

 blown about by the wind, but let one light on a suitable medium 

 and it reasserts its power — perhaps its virulence to our undoing. . 



Now it is a similar power of lying latent that enthusiasts claim 

 for crystals. Thus Dr. A. E. H. Tutton, one of the leading authorities, 

 .says: The virility of a crystal is unchanged and permanent. He 

 pictures very vividly what may happen to a crystal of quartz 

 detached by the weathering of a piece of granite thousands of 

 years ago. It may be "subsequently knocked about the world as 

 a rounded sand grain, blown over deserts by the wind, its corners 

 rounded oft by rude contact with its fellows, and subjected to every 

 variety of rough treatment". But if it happen in our own day to 

 "find itself in water containing in solution a small amount of the 

 material of which quartz is composed, silicon-dioxide, it will begin 

 to sprout and grow again". From a grain of sand in such conditions 

 .several typical crystals of quartz may grow out in different direc- 

 tions. "This marvellously everlasting power possessed by a crystal, 

 of silent imperceptible growth, is one of the strangest functions 

 of .soUd matter, and one of the fundamental facts of science which 

 is rarely realised, compared with many of the more obvious pheno- 

 mena of nature." 



But Dr. Tutton chose a very resistant crystal; what he says of 

 the crystal of quartz would not be so true of a crystal of common 

 .salt, just as what we said of the vinegar threadworm would not 

 hold for the earthworm. When atoms are very firmly locked together 

 in an intricate space-lattice system we do not expect them to b( 

 changeful. It is not easy to induce a diamond to change its state. 

 But the persistence of some organisms through years of latent life 

 is much more remarkable, for they often become dry and brittle, 

 and thus pass out of the colloidal state which is characteristic of 

 living matter. Yet they do not die. As for the prolonged persistenct 

 of some organisms when they are not in a latent state, the marvel 

 there is that they retain their intact integrity in spite of the ceaseless 

 internal bustle of metabolism. Plus fa change, plus c' est la mime chose. 



