Publisher's Synopsis
This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1907 edition. Excerpt: ... CHAPTER XXVII MORPHO-GENESIS IN LIVING AND NOT-LIVING MATTER Movement is one of the peculiarities to strike us first in living beings, although some of them are deprived of it and the seeming spontaneity of others is pure illusion. But form is also a most remarkable characteristic for recognizing living species. Generally speaking, we describe species solely by their form; and with a minute description of this quality we are certain to recognize, everywhere and always, the greater part of the living beings catalogued by zoologists and botanists. In many cases, however, the form of a living being is kept by its corpse; and we know that the corpse is not the same thing as the living being. It is always with the dead bodies of animals, cut up fine to be observed under the microscope, that we observe their histological structure. For this purpose we take the precaution of killing such beings in a very special way, by means of what are called fixative reagents rendering the structural characters of the living being permanent in the dead body. This, of course, is very important from the descriptive point of view and is besides the only known process which reveals in detail the histological structure of living beings. But it is clear that such a method stands in the way of our catching in the act the genesis of forms. In the inanimate world we are also acquainted with characteristic forms of chemical species--the crystalline forms. Except in cases of isomerism, the measure of the diedral angles of the crystal enables us to know its composition. But even this supposes that the crystal has not been moulded hollow in a plastic substance and subsequently filled by a flow of glass or any other fusible substance. Geologists are acquainted with such...
