Abstract
It is generally thought that the cholesteric liquid-crystal blue phases (BP), which are found near the transition to the isotropic liquid phase, are particularly favored by high chiralities. It is shown here, to the contrary, that the lattice structures of BP I and BP II are unstable in the limit of short pitch, and this instability leads, in turn, to a mechanism, which agrees with the available experimental evidence, for the formation of BP III, the seemingly amorphous blue phase.