LECTURE 6.
CRYSTAL QUARRELS
Full conclave, in Schoolroom. There has been a game of
crystallization in the morning, of which various account has to be
rendered. In particular, everybody has to explain why they were
always where they were not intended to be.
L. (having received and considered the report). You have got on
pretty well children: but you know these were easy figures you
have been trying. Wait till I have drawn you out the plans of some
crystals of snow!
MARY. I don't think those will be the most difficult:--they are so
beautiful that we shall remember our places better; and then they
are all regular, and in stars: it is those twisty oblique ones we
are afraid of.
L. Read Carlyle's account of the battle of Leuthen, and learn
Friedrich's "oblique order." You will "get it done for once, I
think, provided you CAN march as a pair of compasses would." But
remember, when you can construct the most difficult single
figures, you have only learned half the game--nothing so much as
the half, indeed, as the crystals themselves play it.
MARY. Indeed; what else is there?
L. It is seldom that any mineral crystallizes alone. Usually two
or three, under quite different crystalline laws, form together.
They do this absolutely without flaw or fault, when they are in
fine temper: and observe what this signifies.
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