148 Distinctions between Organisms and Minerals . [March, 
V. DISTINCTIONS BETWEEN ORGANISMS AND 
MINERALS. 
f ERTAIN recent investigations have shaken, if not 
altogether overthrown, one of the most striking dis- 
tinctions between the inorganic and the organic 
worlds. Suppose v/e take up one of those bodies in which 
dead matter is individualised, i.&., a crystal. We perceive 
at once that its surfaces are planes, bounded by right lines.* 
We may by grinding and rubbing bring such crystals into 
rounded forms, and nature may effeCt the same if the crystals 
lie in the bed of a rapid river, or on the shore of the sea. 
But these forms are essentially artificial, and are never 
assumed when inorganic matter is left to crystallise. On 
the other hand, if we take an animal or a plant and examine 
its shape we find that save in some of the lowest groups it 
has exclusively rounded surfaces, spherical, spheroidal, ellip- 
soidal, cylindrical, &c., and that its outlines are curves. 
This distinction between the living and the lifeless is so 
striking that it was once proposed to view the development 
of animals and vegetables as a process of curvilinear crystal- 
lisation, peculiar to certain kinds of matter when placed 
under proper conditions. The immense mathematical diffi- 
culties involved were the reason why the idea was never 
worked out. 
Again, if we break, cut in pieces, or otherwise dissever a 
mineral and an organism we find that their respective dif- 
ferences of structure are not confined to the outer surface. 
The disintegrated particles of the mineral body are each 
solid ; each, if cut or broken, consists, within and without, 
of the same kind of matter. We may find in minerals, e.g. f 
asbestos, a fibrous structure, but such fibres are not tubular, 
and never contain either a fluid or any solid body differing 
in composition or in structure from the outside layers. In 
the organic world all this is otherwise. If we examine the 
intimate structures of the plant, or the animal, we find 
tubes, sometimes hollow, sometimes containing a fluid, or 
sometimes a solid matter differing in its nature from the 
enclosing walls. We find also round or oval vesicles known 
as cellules and generally containing fluid matter. These 
well-known contrasts are presented here in the briefest and 
most sketchy manner, not as being in themselves novel, but 
as necessary to be borne in mind for the understanding of 
what is to follow. 
* The partial exception in case of the diamond — carbon— is insignificant. 
