792 REPORTS ON THE STATE OF SClENCjI. — 1915. 



Another arrangement of general application is that of Hay, ' A Nomen- 

 clature of Colours applicable to the Arts and Natural Sciences, ' to Manufac- 

 tures, and other purposes of General Utility,' 1845. The second edition has 

 forty plates, each with six one-and-a-half-inch-sided triangles of colour pasted 

 in. The samples were very evenly painted, and very little fading appears to 

 have taken place. The introduction gives the author's theories of colour, and 

 the arrangement, which is difficult to follow, m based upon these. The nomen- 

 clature, in which ' tempered green hue ' and such like appear, was also probably 

 a factor against any general adoption by naturalists. 



Before this time Chevreul, Directeur des Teintures a la Manufacture 

 Nationale des Gobelins — the national manufactory of tapestry in Paris — began 

 to devise a classification of colours. His first discussion, ' La Loi du Contraste 

 simultane des Couleurs,' appeared in 1839. A full account of his scheme, and 

 its application, is given in a memoir of 944 pages ('Mem. Acad. Sci.,' Paris, 

 1861, ' Expose d'un Moyen de definir et de nommer les Couleurs '). This method, 

 which it would take too long to describe, is still used at the national manu- 

 factory of tapestry, and is the basis of the modern French colour schemes. 

 Theoretically, over 14,000 different colours, tones, shades, and tints are obtain- 

 able, but in practice a much smaller number suflSces. In 1855 Digeon published 

 a set of ten charts, ' Cercles Chromatiques de M. E. Chevreul.' The circles 

 are divided into seventy-two sectors, and there is a gradual gradation from red 

 through orange red to orange, and so on. The charts have different percentages 

 of black added, from '1 to -9. Thus there are 720 different shades. The name 

 of the colour is denoted by giving the number of the chart and of the sector. 

 Chevreul's full scheme is made more complete by having different intensities of 

 colour. 



Radde's ' Internationale Farben Skala,' 1877, consists of fifteen cards. The 

 first gives the forty-two cardinal tones of the arrangement ; the remainder 

 gives the range of these from a to v, thus comprising about 800 tints. A 

 sliding block permits of the isolation of adjoining colours. The cards are 

 inconvenient to' use; the colours are printed on inferior paper, and are without 

 names. The scheme has been used by mineralogists. 



Since this date many different colour schemes have appeared, some of which 

 have been drawn up without any reference to previous attempts, and have 

 repeated faults which otherwise might have been guarded against. In 1886 

 appeared the book which has been most used until recent years, Ridgway's 

 ' A Nomenclature of Colors for Naturalists ; and Compendium of Useful Know- 

 ledge for Ornithologists.' Two of Ridgway's statements are much to the point. 

 ' Popular and even technical natural history demands a nomenclature which 

 shall give a standard for the numerous hues, tints, and shades which are cur- 

 rently adopted, and now form part of the language of descriptive natural 

 history.' Again : 'Popular nomenclature of colors has of late years, especially 

 since the introduction of aniline dyes and pigments, become involved in almost 

 chaotic confusion through the coinage of a multitude of new names, many of 

 them synonymous, and still more of them vague, or variable in their meaning. 

 These new names are far too numerous to be of any practical utility, even were 

 each one identifiable with a particular fixed tint. ' In this book there are 

 180 named colours painted into rectangles 1-inch X 5-inch. The colours in the 

 copies of this book which I have examined are not nearly so even as in Hay's 

 book, or in the more recent works. Passing on we come to Saccardo's ' Chromo- 

 taxia ' of fifty samples, with a polyglot nomenclature. This appeared in 1891. 

 In this year also a series of forty colours was given in Constantin and Dufour's 

 ' Nouvelle Flore des Champignons ' to illustrate the terms used in the descrip- 

 tions, and the symbols in the drawings of fungi. 



'A Chart of Correct Colors of Flowers' appeared in T/ie American Florist 

 for 1895. This was arranged by Matthews, and consisted of a single sheet with 

 thirty-six squares of colour, with a very simple nomenclature. 



Another American horticultural chart appeared about 1900 with the title 

 ' Color Guide for Florists.' This was arranged by Kohn, and contains 140 

 colour shades. A scheme which has been used by some naturalists is ' The Prang 

 Standard of Color.' This contains 1,152 examples, and is remarkable for its 

 cheapness, costing only fifty cents. Unfortunately the colours are not named. 



