IV. ’Aμóρϕω⋎a, no. I.— on a case of superficial colour presented by a homogeneous liquid internally colourless

Abstract

A certain variety of fluor spar, of a green colour, from Alston Moor, is well known to mineralogists by its curious property of exhibiting a superficial colour, differing much from its transmitted tint, being a fine blue of a peculiar and delicate aspect like the bloom on a plum, and like that bloom might perhaps be referred to a peculiar texture of the surface, the result of crystallization, were it not that it appears equally on a surface artificially cut and polished. Glasses also are manufactured which, by the agency of a delicate superficial film, consisting apparently of a dull green-coloured powder, and reflecting (or rather dispersing) a green light, exhibit a brownish red tint by transmission; chloride of sulphur, and the infusion of lignum nephriticum are particularized in some books as exhibiting different colours by transmitted and reflected light. As respects the chloride of sulphur, the statement is incorrect, and has originated in a misapprehension of its scale of absorbent action, which (as is the case with many dichromatic media) causes its hue to change from green to red by mere increase of thickness. In the infusion of lignum nephriticum, and in one other instance which has occurred to my notice, the reflected tint arises from suspended particles too minute, or too nearly of the specific gravity of the liquid, to be separated by subidence ,the transmitted colour being that of the transparent liquid in which they float, and the particles themselves being opake. The case which I am about to describe is not precisely parallel to any of these, though far more striking than either. That of the fluor spar presents the closest analogy to it, though from what we know of the impracticability of obliterating the internal structure of mother-of-pearl by any artificial polish, the difference between the solid and fluid states of aggregation precludes any argument from that phenomenon to the one in question.