10 



THE WESTERN POMOLOGIST. 



1871 



For the Western Pomologist. 



Color of Frnlt and Flower. 



Bt J. Staoffer, Lancasteu. Pa. 



Who, that has stood in admiration of tlie Ijrillianl 

 and varied hues of flower or fruit, has not wondered 

 whence these colors V The theor}' of colors has en- 

 gaged some of the ablest minds, and various ingen- 

 ious contrivances resorted to, in the investigation. 

 Newton sought by means of the Solar spectrum, by 

 direct experiments to ascertain the composition of 

 colors, but came to no satisfactory results. 



M. Chebreuil, contrived a chromatic scale in nine 

 gamuts of twenty tones each, so that he actually has 

 classified and arranged 14,434 distinct tints, that 

 may be easily recognized, all of course derived from 

 the primitive colors, formerly affirmed to be Red 

 Yellow and Blue. 



Newton showed that everj' color in nature is pro- 

 duced by the mixture in various proportions of the 

 different kind of lights into which white light is 

 divided by refraction ; he terms the seven colors of 

 the prism as — primary. Dr. Young advanced the 

 theory that the three elements of color are deter- 

 mined as much by the constitution of the sense of 

 sight as by any thing external to us. He conceived 

 that three different sensations maj' be excited by 

 light, but that the proportion in which each 

 of the three is excited depends on the nature of the 

 light ; and conjectures that these three primary sen- 

 sations correspond to red, yellow and blue. 



Sir David Brewster, regards the actual colors of 

 the spectrum as arising from the intermixture of 

 three primary kinds of light — red, yellow and blue. 



The experiments of Helmholtz, with his contri- 

 vance of prisms and len.ses, astonished him to find 

 that white results from a mixture of blue and yel- 

 low — which usually results in a green, but the 

 matter was clearly demonstrated. 



Prof Clark Maxwell contrived a tube fitted with 

 lenses and adjusting slits, and demonstrated that a 

 mixture of the blue, red aud green rays produced' 

 white; blue and red, purple ; red and green, yellow; 

 but if the red predominates, orange; also yellow 

 and blue produced white ; but afl3rms that yellow 

 has no pretentions to be considered a primary col- 

 or—but red, green and blue, that red and green 

 make yellow. 



My object is more particularly to refer to the in- 

 fluence of light on vegetation, fruit, and flowers. 



These absolutely require white light. It is found 

 that each species of colored light has chemical rays 

 throughout the whole extent of the solar spectrum. 

 And it is farther believed that each species of color- 

 ed light possesses special action. The influence of 

 the various colors of the spectrum upon the devel- 

 opment of vegetation ; for instance, no colored 

 light permits vegetables to go through all the pha- 



ses of their evolutions; none of them have flowered 

 or fructified. Violet colored light is positively inju- 

 rious to plants ; as before said, they absolutely 

 require white light. 



I shall not discuss the nature of light, its refrac- 

 tion, polarization &c. or when solar light refrac- 

 ted by a prism or globule of water, is separated 

 like in the rainbow, that bylliant colored arch 

 which makes its apearance when rain is falling in 

 the region of the sky opposite the sun, and the sun 

 is shining upon the rain dro])s at the same time. 



It is enough to glance at this property of light as 

 seen in nature, and familiar to all ; my object is to 

 glance at various facts ; for instance, much depends 

 upon the nianner in which the rays strike the eye 

 or the condition of the surface that bend the rays 

 of reflected light, resolve them into various colors, 

 as in the mother of pearl. If we take wax or stear- 

 in<; blacked with lampblack or graphite, and pour 

 it on a sheet of mother of pearl, it will take a fine 

 impression of the invisible stise of the outer la- 

 mina;, so that when held in a certain position to 

 the eye, the same bright iridescence as in pearl its- 

 self will be seen, only that the under laminae of the 

 pearl will transpose the tints or colors in a chang- 

 able manner which the wax impression cannot. — 

 But if you view the pearl under the light of a lamp 

 fed with Alcohol containing common salt, no colors 

 ^\'\n appear ; indeed tlie yellow rays of the sodium- 

 light, will extingidsh the brilliant red color of red- 

 lead, as every school-boy knows. 



So also with regard to the discovery of Dr. Hoff- 

 man, of the wonderful properties in ConZ Ta/r. As 

 benzole is one of the hydro-carbons from which, by 

 acids and scraps of Iron the wonderful aniline, or 

 coloring base is prepared. The Mauve, is produced 

 by heating aniline, with bichromate of potash g,nd 

 sulphuric acid. Magenta is obtained by heating 

 aniline with arsenic acid. Thus from a refuse re- 

 sulting in the destructive distillation of coal, in gas- 

 making, chemistry has evoked a series of the most 

 brilliant dyes ever seen, and this coal-tar yields no 

 less than fifty distinct chemical substances. What- 

 ever a matter yields, must necessarily be one of its 

 component parts. 



Having just read Mr. Winchell's sketches of crea- 

 tion, my mind reverted to the scenery of the coal 

 period, the luxuriance of vegetation, the abundance 

 of carbonic acid gas, to be absorbed and converted 

 into the carbonic base of the future stone coal, and 

 as light and heat are mysteriously blended, although 

 heat may be latent and yet exist locked up until the 

 particles of matter are set in motion by combustion, 

 giving out the ab.sorbed heat and light, why may 

 not the " solar spectrum " be absorbed also and the 

 rainbow hues impringed upon the coal? we even see 

 these iridescent colors frequently on coal. I have 

 seen them as a scum on the water near our gas fac- 

 tory years ago, and thought how desirable it would 



