IINNEAN SOCIlSXr OF LONDON. Ixvii" 



To this investigation of the fundamental forms of organisms a consi- 

 derable portion of the first volume is demoted, displaying great in genui ty , 

 but apparently always dominated by the desire to compare the laws 

 regulating the forms of organisms with those of crystallization of in- 

 organic substances. Admitting, as he does, that the firm -fluid 

 (festfliissig) consistence of organic matter produces those rounded 

 surfaces, curved lines, &c, which are entirely wanting in crystals, 

 and that the typical forms of organisms are subject to unlimited modi- 

 fications through development, adaptation, and composition, he yet 

 maintains that they are reducible, like crystals, to ideal, mathematical, 

 angular or polyedric forms ; and the principal ones of these typical 

 forms are described in detail, and arranged in classes, families, 

 genera, and species. The great fallacy that pervades this part of 

 the work appears to me to lie in the inattention, in this instance, 

 to that fundamental difference between the crystallized and the 

 organized body which he elsewhere expounds — the former consist- 

 ing of the aggregation of a number of angular elements, the latter 

 of the development of a single globular or rounded cell, growing by 

 expansion or emission from one or, more points in the interior. In 

 the former case, general form is more or less affected by that of the 

 elements, and angularity is the rule ; in the latter, it depends on 

 the number, direction, relative position, and comparative extent of 

 the emissions or points of growth, and angularity is the exception. 

 In the great majority of organisms distinguished by Haeckel under the 

 name of Axonia, there is a central axis growing longitudinally by the 

 extension of the poles, and laterally in two opposite, or more than two 

 radiating directions. When this growth is regular, a form is indeed 

 produced so far mathematical, as the rays diverge at regular angles, 

 and, growing to equal lengths, form a regular, more or less angular 

 outline. In the Vertebrata there is also generally correspondence 

 between the respective parts of the two opposite antimeres, which 

 retain their parallelism with the axis; but there is great dissimi- 

 larity between the different parts of each antimere ; and in plants the 

 parallelism of the antimeres is usually disturbed by more or less of a 

 spiral twist. As there is often some regularity in this disturbance, 

 mathematical botanists have been able to establish more or less fixed 

 laws of phyllotaxis, the study of which may some day lead to the 

 investigation of the disturbing causes, of which we are as yet wholly 

 ignorant. But to learn that the fundamental form of a Primrose is 

 a regular five-sided pyramid, to be classed under the species Penta- 

 clinota of the genus Isopola, belonging to the class of homostaurcus 



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