On that occasion my venerable predecessor and teacher, Professor Story Maskelyne, conducted Lord Kelvin to the lecture table.[[1]]
[1]. It is with the deepest regret that I add that my old friend and revered teacher died on the very day on which these words were spoken.—H. A. M.
At that time, however, there was no laboratory in Oxford for mineralogical and crystallographical research; the Professor only had a lecture-room, he did not reside in Oxford, and his scientific work was necessarily carried on elsewhere. To-day I am more fortunate in being able to draw upon the resources of the well-equipped laboratory of my successor, and former pupil, Professor Bowman, and upon his still more valuable personal assistance and that of Mr. Barker; so that, though I only have to deal with ideas that are simple compared with those which issued with fiery vigour from the fertile brain of the Boyle Lecturer of 1893, I have a better opportunity of showing to an Oxford audience to-day the actual things of which I am speaking, and may help to make my meaning clear to those who cannot know much from personal experience concerning the growth of crystals.[[2]] 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.
[2]. This lecture was beautifully illustrated by excellent slides showing the actual growth of crystals.—Ed.
I have alluded to laws of crystalline structure, to which Lord Kelvin had directed attention: these are the laws of geometrical arrangement which prove crystals to be constructed in an entirely different manner from the living plants which they may so closely resemble; these laws, however, were not established by observations or experiments upon the growth of crystals. They were the result of a century of patient measurements of the external shape of countless crystals; more than a century of accurate determinations of what happens when heat and light are transmitted through them and of numberless other experiments made by physicists; and, added to this, the labours of mathematicians who studied the manner in which solid particles could be arranged so as to correspond to the geometrical and physical proportions thus determined by experiment.
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.