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them ; to range the oranges, citrines, and browns after the yellows ; to include 

 the russets and maroons as subordinate to the reds ; to take the purples as 

 variations of the blues ; and to comprehend the olives under the greens. Sombre 

 colours dominate so conspicuously among Fungi that we understand their color- 

 ation best by regarding their lowly hues as variants from types that owe their 

 names to their very brilliancy. Their complications are so great that it is often 

 diflBcult, even as it is, to refer them to their proper types ; a trouble that was ever 

 present to me when I preliminarily essayed to classify them. 



I would begm with the whites and the blacks, and their intermediate greys ; 

 I at once discard the trammels that the chromatographers lay down for our 

 deception, when they say that these, in their extremes, are no colours at all. 



And first, of the whites. My list shows nineteen distinct terms for these. 

 But most of them are made up on the principle that I have already laid down as 

 of constant occurrence, viz., that they owe their appearance to the natural and 

 obvious terms having been already used. The classical distinction of alhus 

 meaning a dead white, and candidus a shining white, has little prominence in 

 Fries' description. To Fries, albus is white, and perfect whiteness admits of no 

 qualification. If albus, as a specific name, is preoccupied, albellus, albescens, 

 albidior, albidus, and albineus can only express the idea of whiteness, but seem 

 used rather for " whitish." Albicans and candicans should strictly mean " becom- 

 ing white." Argenteus and argyraceus, are a silvery white, silvered. Dealbatus, 

 white-washed or plastered, cerus&atus, coloured with white-lead, and argi/laceus, 

 like white clay, seem to connote texture or surface along with whiteness. 

 Eburneus, ivory-white, ermineus, ermine-white, niveus, snow-white, and virgineus, 

 virgin or pure white, have no more distinction than the English terms by which 

 they are naturally translated. 



Between the extremes of white and black there can be great vai-ieties of 

 greys, and the pure greys run into the blues and browns, so that they are best 

 studied in three groups. Of the pure greys canus and incanus are the nearest to 

 white ; just as we call white hair or a white horse " grey." Cinereus is the grey 

 of wood-ashes, cinerascens is becoming such a grey ; grisexis seems to be a little 

 darker, and lixivius is darker still and inclining to brown. Cretaceo-pallidus is a 

 pale chalky grey. Nigrcscens and nigricans do not mean so much dark grey as a 

 grey that turns black with age. 



Of greys that incline to blue, caesius is the i^alest ; it was the classical term 

 for the blue-grey of the eye. Glaucus is a grey that inclines to green, and 

 glaucescens denotes a paler shade of the same colour. Livens and lividus are 

 bluish or leaden-grey, much like molybdus and plumbeus. Ardosiacus is a dull 

 lead-colour. Ag. (CoUybia) tyltcolor and Ag. ( Omphalia) oniseus seem to owe 

 their specific names to their likeness in colour to a kind of Cod-fish known as 

 oniseus, and so mean rather a light grey, and not the dark slate-grey of the 

 woodlouse we describe under the name of Oniseus. Chalybaeits is a steel or iron- 

 grey ; Fries, under Cortinarins seiophyllus, explains it as caeruleo-fuscus, dusky 

 blue. 



Of the brown-greys, mtirlnus, mouse-colour, is the palest (cf. Paxillus ex- 



