526 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



woman's dark hair — it is in such visions as these that red gives us its 

 emotional thrill altogether untouched hy pain. If the 'multitudinous 

 seas' were indeed 'incarnadined' for us in 'one red/ if the sky were 

 scarlet, or all vegetation crimson, the horror of the world would be 

 painful to contemplate for nervous systems moulded to our vision of 

 nature. Our eyes have developed in a world where the green and blue 

 rays meet us at every step, and where we have in consequence been 

 almost as dulled to them as we are to the weight of the atmosphere 

 that presses in on us on every side. It is under the clouded skies of 

 northern lands that blue is counted the loveliest of colors; it is in the 

 desert that green becomes supremely beautiful and sacred. 



