of the variety of their physiognomy there are some features which remain immutable among them and con- stitute their family mark. These features are three facets which always succeed each other in the same order and make between them very nearly the same angles. These facets, which consist in the primitive form of two contiguous faces, P and M ( Fig. 3 ), and a facet b1, cutting off the intersection of the first two, are parallel to the same straight line which might re- place for us that axis of the hexagonal prism of quartz, which has been so useful to us in establishing the correlation be- tween the direction of the hemihedrism and that of the rotary power in this crystal. | FIG. 3. --Primitive tartrate crystal. | Let us agree to place this right line vertically in our tartrate crystals and to turn forward the group of three facets which is that characteristic the different crystals have in common. All the crystals can thus be ranged, in spite of the variety of their forms, in an oriented series like soldiers exhibiting in front the same series of buttons. But when one has arranged them thus he preceives with surprise that all of these soldiers bear only one epaulet, turned in every case in the same direction: I mean to say that all these tar- trates have their hemihedral facet inclined forward to the right of the observer. If one turns them half-way around they are like children's lead soldiers, or like the god Janus, inasmuch as the front cannot be distinguished from the back: the hemihedral facet from the rear is now in front, but it is always to the right. If one reverses them in order to observe them from the other end they resemble then the double figures on playing cards; their extrem- -15- |