IO2 Permanence and Evolution. 



legends among different nations, in which rocks 

 bearing some likeness to human beings and 

 brutes are supposed to be really transformed 

 men, women, and animals. Another example 

 more to the present purpose may be found in 

 the theories of the alchemists, who, rightly re- 

 cognising the fact that the metals form a natural 

 class connected together by affinities of kind, 

 were by that led to the belief that they were 

 produced and producible the one from the other. 

 The crystals form a class very closely allied to 

 the organised creation, a class too divided into 

 many natural subdivisions ; but the reason for 

 the similarity of different crystals is not the 

 generation of one out of the other, but the 

 genesis of all of them out of analogous materials 

 under identical laws. If crystals had been 

 known distinctly in the time of the alchemists, 

 there can be no doubt that they would have 

 been supposed by them to have been not as they 

 are, separate and incommutable though analo- 



