Note 14 — Chapter III · THE MORPHOLOGICAL COMPOSITION OF PLANTS, CONTINUED.

How the element of time modifies the result, is shown by the familiar fact that crystals rapidly formed are small, and become relatively large when left to form more slowly. If the quantity of molecules contained in a solution is relatively great, so that the mutual polarities of the molecules crowded together in every place throughout the solution are intense, there arises a crystalline aggregation around local axes; whereas, in proportion as the local action of molecules on one another is rendered less intense by their wider dispersion, they become relatively more subordinate to the forces exerted on them by the larger aggregates of molecules that are at greater distances, and thus are left to arrange themselves round fewer axes into larger crystals.