Mitscherlich, who also observed the similarity of the crystallographic characters of selenates and sulphates, which afforded valuable corroboration of his doctrine of isomorphism.
The term allotropy has also been applied to inorganic compounds, identical in composition, but assuming different crystallographic forms. Mercuric oxide, sulphide and iodide; arsenic trioxide; titanium dioxide and silicon dioxide may be cited as examples.
A crystal may be regarded as built up of primitive parallelepipeda, the edges of which are in the ratio of the crystallographic axes, and the angles the axial angles of the crystals.
To reduce these figures to a common standard, so that the volumes shall contain equal numbers of molecules, the notion of molecular volumes is introduced, the arbitrary values of the crystallographic axes (a, b, c) being replaced by the topic parameters' (x, ?i, w), which are such that, combined with the axial angles, they enclose volumes which contain equal numbers of molecules.
These cracks coincide with planes of easy separation or of gliding in the crystal; they are especially useful in helping to determine the crystallographic orientation of a cleavage flake of mica when crystal faces are absent.