224: FAMILIAR FEATURES OF THE ROADSIDE. 



shadows on the snow are pale ultramarine blue ; 

 under a blue sky in midsummer, the color of the 

 placid lake is cobalt blue and the shadows on the 

 grass are lilac ; on a weathered, gray board walk 

 they are nearly as blue as the sky itself. The pal- 

 pitating atmosphere of a warm July day lifts the 

 coloring of the landscape to a higher but softer key 

 instead of reducing it with gray ; and in autumn, 

 when the sugar maple's leaves are turned to gold, 

 the shadows on the trunk, and every gray rock in 

 the vicinity, are tinged with strong lilac. In fine, 

 when the sun shines, everything, even the shadow 

 which we are prone to believe is gray, is replete 

 with color. 



Not even the neutral buff -gray of the road is 

 exempt from blue-tinted shadows ; look at them 

 through a small hole in a bit of white paper and 

 the blue will become more apparent ; where does it 

 come from ? I can answer the question best by sug- 

 gesting two experiments which demonstrate the pe- 

 culiar effect of colored light ; they are both simple 

 and conclusive. If we light two small lamps in a 

 dark room, one with a red and the other with a blue- 

 green glass shade, place them about two feet apart, 

 and eight feet away from some small object within 

 nine inches of the wall, we will see on the latter two 

 shadows, one of which is green and the other red. 



