VIII.—On the Optical Figures produced by the Disintegrated Surfaces of Crystals

Extract

There is no branch of natural science about which we know so little as that which relates to the structure of crystalline bodies. By assuming the form of an integrant molecule, crystallographers have found no difficulty in building those geometrical solids which minerals and artificial crystals present to our observation. They conceive that these molecules unite by their homologous sides in the formation of the primitive crystal, and by supposing that they arrange themselves in plates on the faces of that crystal, each plate successively diminishing in size by the abstraction of a certain number of these molecules in lines of a given direction,—all the secondary forms of the crystal may be easily deduced.