Abstract
THE pictorial representations of the forms taken by ice-crystals are familiar to everyone; and many young observers have been grievously disappointed with the difference between nature's handiwork and artistic fancy, as exemplified by the ice-crystals really seen and those which embellish scientific works. These “ice-flowers,” as Tyndall called them, cannot always be conveniently produced, so a substitute for them, in the form of “ink-flowers,” should be interesting to students of crystallography. Dr. E. Trouessart describes in La Nature how “fleurs de l'encre” can be procured, and the accompanying illustration reproduces some of the forms observed by him. The method employed is very simple. A drop of ink is allowed to dry on a slip of glass, and observed under a microscope with powers of 50,100, or 200 diameters. The inks of commerce vary somewhat in composition, hence the facility with which certain crystalline forms are obtained differs. All inks, however, having a base of solution of gall-nuts and sulphate of iron, give analogous results.
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Ink-Crystals. Nature 51, 60–61 (1894). https://doi.org/10.1038/051060a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/051060a0