Abstract
I AM indebted to you for giving me the opportunity of a remark on Mr. Schwarz's letter. Interesting and valuable though his researches were, the argument, as stated in the paper to which he refers, did not carry conviction to me. To deduce from fossils, in which secondary changes of mineralisation have admittedly taken place, conclusions as to the minute histology of recent shells, seems precarious. The connection between the prisms and the experimentally produced iridescence is not clearly proved; and the explanation of the supposed connection is based on a purely hypothetical arrangement of calcite crystals, such as mineralogists consider highly improbable. It is not proved that the iridescence experimentally produced in the fossils is the same as that occurring in a recent shell. As for Mr. Schwarz's new objection, that the laminæ are not thin enough to produce the phenomenon, this is certainly true for the calcite laminæ,and is equally fatal to Mr. Schwarz's own explanation; but some of the conchiolin laminæ are far thinner than the calcite, and might well produce interference in the light reflected from their upper and under surfaces.
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BATHER, F. Colours of Mother-o'-Pearl. Nature 53, 174 (1895). https://doi.org/10.1038/053174b0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/053174b0
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