Abstract
III.—SELECTIVE METALLIC REFLECTION. IN the two preceding articles various insects; have been described and illustrated, which owe their principal iridescent effects to the colours of “thin plates” and to the diffraction of ribbed structures or “gratings.”. However, mote than one physicist of repute has stated that most insect colours are due to selective metallic reflection. The arguments against this theory, as applied to scales, were considered in the first article; briefly, they are due to the facts that both reflected and transmitted colours disappear when scales are immersed in fluids of a highly refractive index, and that all colours vanish when scales are subjected to pressure, as could scarcely be the case if the colours were due to some molecular structure, such as a film of aniline dye.
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ONSLOW, H. The Iridescent Colours of Insects1. Nature 106, 215–218 (1920). https://doi.org/10.1038/106215a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/106215a0