THE 
JOURNAL OF SCIENCE. 
MAY,- 1883. 
I. FLANK ATTACKS ON EVOLUTION.* 
R. RUSKIN’S noted treatise on the management of 
sheepfolds is not the only work bearing a title which 
throws no light upon the nature of the contents or 
the purposes of the author. The two essays before us might 
indeed have legitimately claimed our attention, but we should 
have little suspected at first sight that both of them are 
attempts to obtain a reversal of the great intellectual reform- 
ation of the nineteenth century. 
The distinctions between crystals and organisms are, no 
less than their mutual analogies, a fair subject for investiga- 
tion. But we scarcely see that Mr. Howard has thrown any 
new light upon this interesting question. It has long been 
known that crystals consist of a multitude of particles simi- 
lar in shape, in structure, and in composition to the whole 
which they constitute. It is admitted that a crystal, though 
it may grow, is incapable of true ingestion and excretion ; 
that it does not propagate its species, and that it has no vital 
cycle. There is indeed in the crystal, as in the organism, 
individuation ; a certain portion of matter, more or less 
complex, is marked off from all around it. It may further 
be contended that a crystal can grow under suitable cir- 
cumstances, and that if damaged it possesses a self-repara- 
tive or restorative power. We may also be told that the 
distinction between growth and reproduction is not so capi- 
tal as was once supposed ; and again, that there are animals 
* The Contrast between Crystallisation and Life. By J. E. Howard, 
F.R.S., F.L.S., F.R.M.S., &c. London : E. Stanford. 
Le Nouveau Programme de l’Enseignment Secondaire. Par M. H. DE 
Casamajor. ( Les Mondes , March 4, 1883.) 
VOL. V. (THIRD SERIES.) 
S 
