THE COLORS OF FLOWERS. 839 



tinned pulverization. Deep dark-blue smalt can be converted into a 

 perfectly colorless powder by being pulverized and washed, and no 

 one would recognize it as being identical with the coarsely grained 

 original article. Gold-powder, in its most minute division, does not 

 possess the known yellow color of the metal, but a bluish-green shade, 

 and at first glance would not be held to be metallic gold until the 

 blue-green powder, when fused, reassumes its yellow color. When 

 we introduce a film of gold between two transparent pieces of glass, 

 and hold it against the sun, the rays of the latter will shine through 

 with a bluish-green color ; this transparency of gold, however, only 

 occurs when the film is ^^ of a line, or less, in thickness. It is in- 

 disputable that in the two instances mentioned here the appearance of 

 color depends upon the minute mechanical division of the pigment, and 

 with this is also connected the alteration in the color of solid bodies, 

 when converted into gas or air. In a gaseous (therefore a very mi- 

 nutely divided) condition, black iodine becomes violet, yellow sul- 

 phur red, blue indigo purple. All these instances, to which numerous 

 others might easily be added, prove the intimate connection between 

 color and form. According to my opinion, some similar process, as 

 far as regards form and division, possibly occurs in vegetable nature, 

 and exerts its influence upon the multiplicity of color-shades. 



Flower pigments, almost without an exception, are so inconstant 

 and transient that they can not be employed in our industries. They, 

 the children of light, separated from a vital union with the plant, no 

 longer resist the effect of light they wither and bleach in it. This 

 is unhappily true with the most universally found of all the leaf- 

 green (chlorophyl). If this pigment could by some means be changed 

 into a fast dye, the poisonous Swinefurt, or Paris-green, would have 

 seen its last days. What an incomparable color is contained in the 

 safflower (Carthamus tinctorius), which, although used as a beautiful 

 rose in the dyeing of silk, is unhappily of an unstable nature ! The 

 same is true of the splendid yellow of the flowers of the wild Reseda 

 luteola. This plant, in spite of the instability of its color, is cultivated 

 in France, England, and different parts of Germany. The white color 

 of various flowers lilies, roses, and others is generally produced by a 

 white cellular juice, but may also be due to a white pigment, artho- 

 leucine, suspended in the colorless cell-juice. These white flowers 

 would offer most suitable material for researches, if the experimental 

 conversion of colors were undertaken. When undecomposed light is 

 reflected by a body, its color appears to us as white. White, there- 

 fore, is no actual color, but simply a union of all colors, or the collec- 

 tive rays of light in an unseparated combination. By an alteration of 

 the chemical combination in the plant, by means of an appropriate 

 manure, it becomes possible to cause the fibers of the white petals no 

 longer to reflect upon our eye an undivided white, but a divided col- 

 ored ray. The yellow or orange coloring-matter of flowers, anthoxan- 



