253 



Of course, " purple" here only means "glistening" or " dazzling," but such a use 

 of words does not accord with modern ideas. 



Much of the diflBculty that surrounds the nomenclature of colours is also due 

 to there being no authoritative code. In each branch of art or knowledge at the 

 present day different names are used for the same colours. The "purple" of the 

 cardinal is crimson; the "pink" of the huntsman is scarlet. An artist calls his 

 colours by the names under which he buys them of his colour-man. But a milliner 

 wants to invent a fresh name with each change of fashion, and the words we get 

 from the fashionable journals are veritable marvels ; couleur de crapaud mort, 

 eau de Nile, elephant-grey, London smoke, mushroom-colour, being specimens. 

 Fortunately "they have their day, and cease to be." An amusing instance was 

 given me lately by an omnibus-driver. One of his passengers had been much 

 struck by a pair of horses he had been driving, a dun and a strawberry-roan, in 

 the horsey-man's language ; the passenger, a tailor, described the one as "drab," 

 and the other as a "claret-mixture." 



Consequently mycologists must be a law unto themselves, and if we are will- 

 ing to hold the illustrious Fries as our law-giver, we must study, not so much what 

 colour-names should mean, as in what sense he used them. 



Perhaps the only wonder is that there is such a limited number of colour- 

 names after all. If we have a clear idea of a dozen colours, we must remember 

 that we can get 479,001,600 permutations out of them, by mixing each with every 

 other, even in similar proportions. For our names to be of any use we must group 

 around each one those shades which most closely assimilate to the named type, and 

 indicate their differences as far as we can by compound words, or qualifying 

 adjectives, or suffixes, or affixes. We all have an idea of the colour of gold, for 

 example, but look at a sovereign, together with a dozen pieces of jewellery made 

 at various times and places, and you will soon see what a very comprehensive, or, 

 as the logicians say, extended, signification such a colour-name may have. And 

 if a blight and definite colour may be so varied, how much more variable may a 

 less pronounced one be? 



Much has been written on the science of colours, but I know no book that 

 deals at all exhaustively with their nomenclature. Field's Chromatography has 

 a wide reputation among artists, but it is of little use to us. Neither is the 

 classical work of Chevreul, the oldest professor in the world, who still, in his 

 ninety-ninth year, lectures on chemistry in Paris. 



We need not be much troubled about classification, for a very simple method 

 is sufficient for our purposes. But it is as well to know how chromatographers 

 ordinarily classify colours ; and to this end I copy the following from one of the 

 many editions of Field's book. 



Neutral colours .... white, black. 



Primary 

 Secondary 

 Tertiary 

 Semi-neutral 



yellow, red, blue, 

 orange, green, purple, 

 citrine, russet, olive, 

 brown, maroon, grey. 



I propose to group the whites and blacks with the greys that come between 



