Notices respecting New Books. 65 
A Prospectus has just appeared, announcing for publication 
upon the 31st of March the first number of a Quarterly Journal of 
Science and the Arts, and that it will be regularly continued upon 
the last days of March, June, September, and December. This 
Journal will contain a series of original communications upon 
subjects connected with science and the arts, and with philoso- 
phical literature in general. Notices of scientific discoveries 
and inventions, and of experiments and researches carried on in 
the Institution. Reviews and notices of scientific works. Abs- 
tracts from the Transactions of learned societies, and from do- 
mestic¢ and foreign publications ; and accounts of the proceedings 
of the members of the Royal Institution, and of the public and 
other courses of lectures. 
The name of Mr. Brande, of the Royal Institution, to whom 
comimimications are requested to be addressed, is a pledge that 
this work will be conducted on liberal and enlightened princi- 
ples; and we hope it will meet with due encouragement. 
Dr. Henning, of the Hot-Wells, Bristol, author of an Inquiry 
into the Pathology of Scrofula, is preparing for the press a work 
on Pulmonary Consumption, which will be ready for publication 
early in the spring. WS Preis ae 
Extract of a French Work entitled “ L’Optique des Cou- 
leurs,” (the Optics of Colours). By Father CastE., a Je- 
suit. 
I know a painter whose taste and talent in portrait-painting I 
esteein very much, and who, in showing ine his painting-room, 
which was very poor in colours, made me expressly observe, that 
there was neither carmine, nor lake, nor vermilion for the reds, 
nor any lively yellow; but simply Prussian blue for the blues 
and greens, a brown red for all sorts of reds and violets, and a 
very indifferent yellow, the name of which I have forgotten. 
His portraits were very fine. His flesh colours were more 
especially very natural, very lively, and very bright even, when it 
was required. 
I reasoned with him, and objected to him that other celebrated 
painters did not fail to employ the most lively reds and the 
brightest yellows. He agreed with me that paintings thus co- 
loured, more particularly with red, were much in fashion. He 
brought me back, however, to truth and to immortality. ‘Those 
colours, he observed to me, are false: nature is lively by con- 
trast alone, and by the judgement she displays. All her colours 
are but indifferent in the detail of each trait; but it is the op- 
position which brings out her productions, and gives them lite, 
fire, and the greatest éclat. He added that lake, carmine, ver- 
Vol. 47, No. 213, Jan. 1816. E milion, 
