382 JAMES CLEKK MAXWELL. [CHAP. XII. 



la nuance jaune et du noir, qui lui donne une certaine 

 ressemblance avec le poll du loup. . . . Substantivement," he 

 continues, " Le louvet n'est, a proprement parler, qu'un 

 isabelle charbonne." The Arabic for green, and (I have no 

 doubt) the word Daumas speaks of, is akhdar, kh as ch in 

 Scotch, and the dot marking a modification which, it hap- 

 pens, is imitated by interpolating an L in Spanish and 

 Portuguese; so ^X&>/>09 may have been supposed to have 

 something to do with the Semitic word. However, accord- 

 ing to dictionaries, " the three greens " in Arabic are " gold, 

 wine, and meat," which beats the green horse. I suppose 

 the Eevisionists will leave " pale," and certainly ^Xcopov 8eo9 

 is the Homeric for a blue funk. But x\cop6<;, and akhdar, 

 too, are certainly the colour of chlorophyll, and Daumas's 

 remark is a note on a line in a translation from a poet, 

 which runs " Ces chevaux verts comme le roseau qui croit au 

 bord des fleuves." 



I am glad you are going to preach, and I should like to 

 sit under you, but as you assume, it would not do. Thanks 

 all the same. 



To MRS. MAXWELL. 



Athenaum, 22d March 1871. 



I also got a first-rate letter from Monro about colour, 

 and the Arab words for it (I suppose he studied them 

 in Algeria). They call horses of a smutty yellow colour 

 " green." The " pale " horse in Revelation is generally 

 transcribed green elsewhere, the word being applied to grass, 

 etc. But the three green things in the Arabic dictionary 

 are " gold, wine, and meat," which is a very hard saying. 



FROM C. J. MONRO, Esq. 



Hadley, Barnet, 10th September 1871. 



... Of your own things, the Classification of Quantities 

 and the Hills and Dales, are all I have read to much purpose. 

 Nor them either, you may say, if I go on to ask why you 

 say that " in the pure theory of surfaces there is no method 

 of determining a line of water-shed or water-course, except 



