Abstract
PROFESS0R MASKELYNE, in introducing his subject, said that in the assembly-room of the Chemical Society he should have to treat of Crystallography as the Science of Chemical Morphology. To the chemist the crystallisation of a substance is a familiar marvel; so familiar, indeed, that he hardly sufficiently considers its importance in relation to his own science. For the physicist, on the other hand, the instinct with which the molecules of a substance obey the laws of a sublime geometry—sublime because simple and universal—is a theme the contemplation of which has guided him to some of the most subtle and almost metaphysical conceptions that he has formed regarding the constitution of matter, and has afforded him invaluable insight into the working of the laws that control the pulsations of heat and light and other manifestations of force. But, although the morphological relations of the crystal are the external expression of the more subtle physical properties which underlie them, he stated that the purpose of the lectures he was about to deliver would be confined to the consideration only of the former.
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On the Morphology of Crystals * . Nature 11, 187–190 (1875). https://doi.org/10.1038/011187c0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/011187c0