Published online by Cambridge University Press: 01 May 2009
In Mr. Sorby's presidential address at the anniversary meeting of the Geological Society in 1879, attention was drawn to the fact that the carbonate of lime in calcareous organisms is in certain cases in the form of calcite, in others of aragonite, and various genera of such organisms were classed according to their mineralogical constitution. It was also shown that aragonite fossils are of greatly inferior stability to those formed of calcite, in many deposits casts only of aragonite fossils being preserved, whilst those of calcite remain unaltered. In the same address Mr. Sorby insisted on the importance of this difference of stability as affecting the trustworthiness of the geological record.
1 An Abstract of this paper was read before Section C. of the British Association at Manchester, September, 1887.