166 ANNUAL OF SCIENTIFIC DISCOVERY. 



tern of rail- way and marine colored signals. Dr. "Wilson has collected a great 

 number of new and well authenticated facts on all branches of the subject. 

 The frequency of the affection appears to be far greater than had previously 

 been suspected. The experience of the well-known oculist of Glasgow, Dr. 

 Mackenzie, that in forty thousand cases of eye-disease treated by him he had 

 met with only two cases of color-blindness, does not invalidate other statements 

 as to its frequency. He may not have often directed his inquiries to the 

 point, and possibly the physical condition of the eye producing this affection 

 renders it less sensitive and liable to other complaints. Dr. Wilson estimates, 

 from his own observations and inquiries, the per centage of color-blind per- 

 sons in the community as high as one hi twenty, and strongly marked cases 

 about one in fifty. 



COLOK IN NATURE AND AKT. 



Frames of pictures in general are no better than necessary evils; for, if 

 they are requisite to isolate a picture from surrounding objects, yet it must 

 be confessed that the contiguity of the frame to the picture is exceedingly 

 detrimental to the illusion of perspective. It is this which explains the dif- 

 ference between the effect of a framed picture, and the effect of the same pic- 

 ture when viewed through an opening which allows of our seeing neither 

 frame nor limits. The effect then produced recall all the illusion of the 

 diorama. In the case of not a few pictures, taste is best shown in knowing 

 how little frame is necessary. The color of the wall, and nature of surround- 

 ing objects, must be considered in judging of this. "We once saw a painting 

 by a German artist, representing the interior of a Gothic ruin, with a snowy 

 landscape visible through the open archway of the door, and some snow, 

 drifted in, lying upon the steps and stone floor inside. The perspective was 

 exquisite magical ; and the drifted snow upon the steps and floor seemed 

 as if you could lift it off with a knife. The picture was in the possession of 

 an able connoisseur and how had he treated it ? Most people would have 

 put round it a frame proportionate to the value of the picture ; that seems 

 to be the usual way so many inches of frame to a 20 picture, and so many 

 more to one worth 100. Not so with this connoisseur. "When we saw it, 

 this gem of a painting had round it a simple, narrow bead of gilding, and was 

 hung upon a wall of an orange-cream color the unobtrusive frame, allowing 

 the exquisite perspective to appear to advantage, while the peculiar color of 

 the wall served to bring out, in all its brilliance, that other fine point in the 

 piece, the snow. 



With this warning against having too much frame which we can not, of 

 course, shape into any definite axiom, but which will answer the purpose if 

 it make people think at all upon the subject we proceed to consider the 

 relation of color which ought to exist between a frame and the picture which 

 it surrounds. Gilt frames are, of all others, the handsomest and most 

 generally applicable, and are especially suited for large paintings in oil. Many 

 landscape-paintings in oil are well set off by a gray frame, particularly if we 

 take a gray tinted with the complementary (or opposite) of the dominant color 



