Crystallites

Crystallites, microscopic particles occurring in vitreous rocks and in some artificial slags representing incipient crystallisation. They include globulites, spherical particles, sometimes concentric or radiate; trichites, hair-like bodies, straight, curved, or looped; crystalloids or grouped crystallites approximating to true crystalline forms; and microliths, which are apparently merely very minute crystals, as they may exhibit not only distinct faces and angles but double refraction, dichroism, and other characters of crystals. Crystallites are often in layers marking the flow of the glass when liquid, and as they increase in number the glass becomes devitrified, as, for example, when barley-sugar, losing its clear, brittle character, becomes cloudy, soft, and granular, becoming, in fact, sugar-candy.