COLOR 



blenders, for they contain both yellow and red. 

 So long as you keep to one kind of flower you 

 are in little danger from discords, because here 

 again nature attests her esthetics and gives war- 

 rant for our own. For it is a well-known fact in 

 botany that the flowers of any plant species will 

 be restricted in their coloring to two of the pri- 

 maries with, probably, the intermediate tint, that 

 comes of hybridizing. For example, the rose 

 rejects blue and keeps to red and yellow. It also 

 adds white, for that does not commit the plant 

 which elects it to the use of the third primary. 

 The rose has almost every shade of red and 

 pink; it has a gamut of yellows; it even threatens 

 to blend these and produce an orange rose, but 

 has gone no closer than a salmon tint, so far; 

 but you will find no rose with a purple cast, for 

 that would promise a divergence into the third 

 and forbidden primary — blue. We shall prob- 

 ably never have a blue rose; at least, the labor 

 of experts and centuries in the endeavor to pro- 

 duce one has come to naught. We should not 

 care as much for it as for the rose of to-day if 

 we had it, I dare say; at least, after the novelty 

 had worn off. 



117 



