Such mineral individuals as once possessed the crystal form may have been broken and their surfaces ground away by mutual attrition under the rhythmic beating of the waves upon a shore or in the continuous rolling of pebbles on a stream bed, until as battered relics they are piled away together in a bed of sand. Yet no amount of such rough handling is sufficient to destroy the crystal individuality, and if they are now surrounded with conditions which are suitable for their growth, their individual nature again becomes revealed in new crystal outlines. Many of our sandstones when turned in the bright sunlight send out flashes of light to rival a bank of snow in early spring. These bright flashes proceed from the facets of minute crystals formed about each rounded grain of the sand, and if we examine them under a lens, we may note the beauty of line formed with such exactness that the most delicate instruments can detect no difference between the similar angles of neighboring crystals (Fig. 12). [Illustration: FIG. 12.—Battered sand grains which have taken on a new lease of life and have developed a crystal form. _a_, a single grain grown into an individual crystal; _b_, a parallel growth about a single grain; _c_, growth of neighboring grains until they have mutually interfered and so destroyed the crystal facets—the common condition within the mass of a rock (after Irving and Van Hise).] This individual nature of the crystal is believed to reside in a symmetrical grouping of the chemical molecules of the substance into larger and so-called “crystal molecules.” The crystal quality belongs to the chemical elements and to their compounds in the solid condition, but not to ordinary mixtures of them. =Some properties of natural crystals, minerals.=—No two mineral species appear in crystals of the same appearance, any more than two animal species have been given the same form; and so minerals may be recognized by the individual peculiarities of their crystals. Yet for the reason that crystals have so generally been prevented from developing or retaining their characteristic faces, in the vast number of instances it is the behavior, and not the appearance, of the mineral substance which is made use of for identification.