976 THE AMERICAN NATURALIST. [Vor. XXXIV. 
uncertain. Mr. Carr shows that they were a branch of the Shawnee 
division of the Algonquian stock that was finally absorbed by another 
branch, the Kickapoos. F. R. 
GENERAL BIOLOGY. 
Biology of Crystals.' — From biology to the structure of crystals 
seems a far cry, but those who have penetrated farthest in the study 
of organisms have time and time again come to the borderland of 
the inorganic realm. Most have declined to go over into the untrav- 
eled domain of a foreign country. Professor Bütschli is not one of 
these. His studies on the structure of protoplasm are the most 
profound that have been made. ‘They led him to recognize a single 
fundamental protoplasmic structure, — the alveolar or “foam " struc- 
ture, — of which the karyokinetic figures are only special expressions. 
At the time of his early discoveries there were few inorganic substances 
which were known to have any such structure. Emulsions alone 
were comparable. Studies of starch, cellulose, and chitin revealed 
to Bütschli a similar alveolar structure, and now he has continued his 
researches into crystals of sulphur and certain salts and finds here 
the same structure. The protoplasmic structure is, then, not some- 
thing peculiar to living substance, but is probably characteristic of 
substance in general — at least of changing, forming, growing sub- 
stance. Moreover, in the forming crystal we have radial lines pro- 
ceeding from a center, and these are structurally like the radiations 
of the asters — like, because due in both cases to a central pull 
exerted on an alveolar structure. 
The vast mass of the work deals with matters of interest, first of 
all, to crystallographers and physical chemists — the microscopic 
details of crystal formation, the polymorphism in crystallization, the 
determination of the polymorphic form by external conditions. 
These are matters which will be eagerly read by the biologist also, 
a few years hence, when the close and fundamental relations be- 
tween organic development and crystalline development become 
more generally appreciated. C ED 
1 Bütschli, O. Untersuchungen über Microstrukturen des erstarrten Schwe- 
a nebst Bemerkungen über Sublimation, Uberschmelzung und Ubersiittigung des 
hwefels und einiger anderer Körper. Leipzig, Engelmann, 1900. Quarto, 
i PP- 4 pls., 6 figs. 
