ON FLORAL ATTRACTIVENESS AND COLOUR 95 



tale has the colour of flowers to tell us ? In the 

 first place, I am not sure that I am content to 

 see white appearing solely between yellow and 

 pink in Dr. Percy Groom's scale of floral colour ; 

 the scale does not look quite true, running in the 

 following order : yellow, white, pink, red, crimson, 

 violet, blue. I should be more content if the order 

 ran like this: white, blue, green, yellow, orange, 

 red, violet, blue, white ; for scales such as these, if 

 continued, form a circle, a complete and continuous 

 whole. They cannot rightly be cut up into abrupt 

 sections of straight lines if they are to tell the 

 whole truth. The green flowers appear to stand 

 as proof of this, for they draw their tint from both 

 extremities of the scale — from blue, the highest of 

 primal colours, and from yellow, the lowest ; they 

 link up the extremities and complete the circle ; 

 they have no definite qualities, but are at once high 

 and lowly. 



If we start with the lowliest of flowers of 

 clean-cut individuality, it must be with the yellow 

 ones ; and yellow stands for the dawn of definite 

 life. After that, for flowers of distinct position, 

 we must go to the red ones, those of orange tints 

 being intermediary ; and with red we reach the 

 fulfilment of animal or worldly vigour. From this 



