Crystal

“ In the early stages of development the crystal will begin to cloud over, first becoming dull, then suffused with milky clouds, among which sparkle a large number of little specks of light like gold dust in the sunlight. The focus of the eyes is inconstant, the pupil rapidly expanding and contracting, the crystal at times disappearing entirely in a haze or film which seems to pass before the eyes. Then the haze will disappear, and the crystal will loom up into full view again, accompanied by a lapse of the seer into full consciousness. ”

“ The surface of the ground, so dull and forbidding at first sight, besides being rich in plants, shines and sparkles with crystals: mica, hornblende, feldspar, quartz, tourmaline. The radiance in some places is so great as to be fairly dazzling, keen lance rays of every color flashing, sparkling in glorious abundance, joining the plants in their fine, brave beauty-work—every crystal, every flower a window opening into heaven, a mirror reflecting the Creator. ”

“ If such a crystal alights—and sometimes it is weary waiting, for in a storm lasting an entire day, frequently but two or three perfect crystals deign to alight upon the receiving board—but when the perfect crystal arrives, then with infinite skill, and just the right touch, which must be acquired by practice, the little crystal is gently lifted upon a tiny, sharp-pointed stick, transferred to the slide and photographed as quickly as possible, before it has had an opportunity to dissolve, and become again a mere drop of uninteresting moisture. ”

“ My subject this evening is not the physical properties of crystals, not even their dynamics; it is merely the geometry of the structure—the arrangement of the molecules in the constitution of a crystal. Every crystal is a homogeneous assemblage of small bodies or molecules. ”

“ So far from regarding the growth of a crystal as of no further importance after it has been proved to be quite different from the growth of a plant, we must still think of it as one of the most interesting and mysterious events, and the one through which we may hope to get the clearest insight into the nature of the crystal itself. ”

“ When I delivered my own inaugural lecture I had no means of making visible to an audience the astonishing features of crystal growth. Beautiful effects may easily be witnessed by anyone with a few drops of common solution and a magnifying glass, yet I believe that they are witnessed by comparatively few persons. ”

“ It is one of the many marvellous phenomena of nature that mineral, as well as many vegetable and animal substances, on entering into a state of solidity, take upon themselves a definite form called a crystal. These crystals build themselves round an axis or axes with wonderful regularity, and it has been found, speaking broadly, that the same substance gives the same crystal, no matter how its character may be altered by colour or other means. ”

“ The mystic crystal is brought out wrapped in a yellow handkerchief, and is placed in a green bowl beneath which is spread a blue cloth, the reflections from these different colors being probably calculated to stimulate the optic nerve and favor the appearance of some picture upon the polished surface of the crystal. The young girl, in rapt attention, looks long and earnestly; at last she cries out that she sees her own form and that of her lover. ”

“ I reminded him of his having spoken of crystals of ice, and asked how that term could be applied to any thing but mineral bodies.
“The term crystal,” he replied, “came from the Greek word for ice—it was afterwards applied to rock crystal, which the ancients imagined to be water converted into stone; but it now signifies the regular figure in which the particles of any substance arrange themselves in passing from the liquid to the solid state.—Each of those sub{86}stances has a figure for its crystal peculiar to itself, and from which it never varies. ”

“ LECTURE VIII. CRYSTAL CAPRICE. Formal Lecture in Schoolroom, after some practical examination of minerals.
L. We have seen enough, children, though very little of what might be seen if we had more time, of mineral structures produced by visible opposition, or contest among elements; structures of which the variety, however great, need not surprise us: for we quarrel, ourselves, for many and slight causes;—much more, one should think, may crystals, who can only feel the antagonism, not argue about it. ”

“ It need not, then, be a matter of surprise to learn that the Crystal exerts a very definite and sensible effect upon the nervous system of a certain order of subjects. It does not affect all alike, nor act in exactly the same way on those whom it does so affect. Where its action is more or less rapid and remarkable, the quartz or beryl Crystal may be taken as the most effective medium for producing the vision. ”

“ A crystal grows when surrounded by a suitable environment, capable of supporting it with its natural food, namely, its own chemical substance in the liquid or vaporous state or dissolved in a solvent. Moreover, when a crystal is broken, and then surrounded with this proper environment, it grows much more rapidly at the broken part than elsewhere, repairing the damage done in a very short space of time and soon presenting the appearance of a perfect crystal once more. ”

“ Remember that when we say we know how the particles of a crystal are arranged we really know nothing about their nature, and can only represent them by spheres, or solid figures, or cells, or even points, in order to get a representation of their arrangement. ”

“ If the growth of a crystal is really the coming together of vibrating particles which cohere because they are in tune with one another and so enter into a partnership like that of the dancers or the figure skaters, then is it not possible that we may be able to communicate these vibrations to a supersaturated solution, which is so densely crowded that it is ready to crystallize, by some other means than by inoculating it with the appropriate crystal? ”

“ Fig. 1.—Sand Grains with Quartz Crystals growing from them.
This marvellously everlasting power possessed by a crystal, of silent imperceptible growth, that is, of adding to its own regular structure further accretions of infinitesimal particles, the chemical molecules, of its own substance, is one of the strangest 4functions of solid matter, and one of the fundamental facts of science which is rarely realised, compared with many of the more obvious phenomena of nature.
A crystal in the ordinary sense of the word is solid matter in its most perfectly developed and organised form. ”

“ An interesting and very beautiful lecture experiment was performed by the author in a lecture a few years ago at the Royal Institution, which illustrated in a striking manner this fact that the light reaching the eye from a crystal is of two kinds, namely, white light reflected from the exterior faces and coloured light which has penetrated the crystal substance and emerges refracted and dispersed as spectra. ”

“ Assimilation and Growth in the Crystal.—There exists in the crystal a property analogous to nutrition, a kind of nutrility, which is the rudiment of this fundamental property of living beings. The development of a crystal starts from a primitive nucleus, the germ of the crystalline individual that we will presently compare to the ovum or embryo of a plant or an animal. Placed in a suitable culture-medium—i.e., in a solution of the substance—this germ develops. ”

“ Just as the real nature of a person is first disclosed by his behavior under trying circumstances, so of a crystal it is its conduct under stress of one sort or another which brings out its real character. By way of illustration let us prepare a sphere from the mineral quartz—it matters not whether we destroy the beautiful outlines of the crystal or employ a battered fragment—and then prepare a sphere of similar size and shape from a noncrystalline or amorphous substance like glass. ”

“ I have carefully studied crystal-gazing, and though I have remarked individual differences in each sensitive, I think I may say that, as far as working methods are concerned, I have come to the following conclusions:—
The material of which the object is composed is not a matter of indifference. Balls of rock-crystal have given me the best results. I have seen people, incapable of receiving visions with ordinary glass, obtain them in a tiny ball of natural crystal. Objects in rock-crystal have the inconvenience of being very expensive. ”

“ Is the stone too cold which absorbs the heat of the summer sun and does not part with it during the night? Crystals, though they be of ice are not too cold to melt.... Crystal does not complain of crystal any more than the dove of its mate. ”

“ In a crystal we have the clear evidence of the existence of a formative life-principle, and though we cannot understand the life of a crystal, it is none the less a living being. There may be, besides crystals, other such individualized, material systems of beings, perhaps of gaseous constitution, or composed of substance still more tenuous. ”

“ One of the most beautiful illustrations of cohesive attraction is seen in crystallization. In every instance in which substances pass into the form of a solid, they tend to assume regular shapes called crystals. Each material has its own characteristic form, so that a crystal is a type of a species in the mineral world, even as a plant or an animal is in the organic kingdom. A crystal is a substance bounded by plain surfaces and symmetrically arranged about imaginary lines called axes. The final form depends upon certain smaller forms in its interior structure. ”

“ But all these were experiments and reasoning upon matter which appears to be as nearly as possible inert; they entirely ignore the power of growth possessed by crystals; indeed, no such power is contemplated by the ordinary theories of crystal structure or could be predicted from them.
So far, then, we may regard the comparison of crystals with plants and all the fanciful ideas concerning their connexion with the origin of life which were suggested by that comparison as only one more example of the dangers of reasoning from analogy. ”

“ A crystal possesses two further fundamental properties besides its style of architecture. The first is that it is bounded externally by plane faces, arranged on the definite geometrical plan just alluded to and mutually inclined at angles which are peculiar to the substance, and which are, therefore, absolutely constant for the same temperature and pressure. The second is that a crystal is essentially a homogeneous solid, its internal structure being similar throughout, in such wise that the arrangement about any one molecule is the same as about every other. ”

“ Lenses or globes were used for kindling the sacred vestal fire and for cauterizing the flesh, whilst ladies carried balls of crystal in order to cool their hands during the heat of summer. The artists of the Early Renaissance greatly favoured the use of rock-crystal, and executed beautiful carvings in this material. ”

“ We can only picture these liquids as consisting of particles which, while they are free to move in all directions, always continue to face the same way, like a group of dancers who in all their evolutions continue to face the audience, instead of turning as they move. When the mechanism which renders possible this remarkable behaviour is better understood, we may be sure that it will bring about a better understanding of the manner in which a solid crystal is constructed. ”

“ In fact, the form and size of every crystal is dependent upon its whole surroundings, for example, upon the vessel in which the crystallization takes place, upon the temperature and the pressure of the air under which the crystal is formed, upon the presence or absence of heterogeneous bodies, etc. ”

“ For, after all, when after making physical experiments upon the solid crystal and studying its action upon heat and light we are led to speculate upon the manner in which it is constructed, we must not forget that it grew, and that the material was laid down under conditions which we can only understand by studying what happens on the surface as it grows. ”

“ This is strikingly shown when a sphere cut from a crystal, say of calcite or quartz, is immersed in acid; after some time the resulting form is bounded by surfaces approximating to crystal faces, and has the same symmetry as that of the crystal from which the sphere was cut. When a crystal bounded by faces is immersed in a solvent the edges and corners become rounded and “prerosion faces” developed in their place; the faces become marked all over with minute pits or shallow depressions, and as these are extended by further solution they give place to small elevations on the corroded face. ”

“ I can tell you, you shall hear of the highest crystalline merits that I can think of, to-day: and I wish there were more of them; but crystals have a limited, though a stern, code of morals; and their essential virtues are but two;--the first is to be pure, and the second to be well shaped.
MARY. Pure! Does that mean clear--transparent?
L. No; unless in the case of a transparent substance. You cannot have a transparent crystal of gold; but you may have a perfectly pure one.
ISABEL. But you said it was the shape that made things be crystals ”

“ I pointed out, I remember, that these delicate forms are, like the frost patterns on a window-pane, really expressions of the crystalline shape and symmetry of the mineral; each mineral consists of crystals, and therefore has its own peculiar crystalline shape which is one of its inherent properties; moreover, this persists unchanging through the ages, and under all conditions, and is in no way dependent upon the environment in which the mineral is situated. ”