DESIGNATIONS. 83 



their denomination from certain precious stones. Well, these 

 denominations have no meaning, because the same stones 

 vary singularly in their shades, and even in their colour. 

 Ask a mineralogist. The ruby is of a brilliant red, or rather 

 softened with violet, but there are rubies which are of an 

 orange red, and rubies of a rose colour. The emerald pos- 

 sesses all the tones of green, from the palest to the darkest. 

 There are likewise white emerald^ and yellow emeralds. The 

 topaz you think must be yellow, for want of a word to specify 

 a colour, and of all possible yellows, from that nearly white 

 to a deep orange; but there are white topazes, green-tinted 

 topazes, and others almost blue. The garnet is of a kind of 

 deep crimson J inquire again of the mineralogists, and they will 

 teU you that there are also orange garnets, green garnets, and 

 black garnets. • 



Now, if there were anything we ought to be perfectly 

 acquainted with, it would be the plants and the flowers upon 

 which we have trodden from our infency. By their means, 

 then, if men would only deign to look at them sometimes, 

 we should have, for the purpose of designating colours, a 

 complete gamut, which would be wanting in no tone or the 

 fiuction of a tone, and a language exact and well arranged, 

 inasmuch as the words would have a fixed meaning, invariable 

 and the same for all. Some names of colours have been 

 borrowed from flowers ; and everybody, when they pronoimce 

 them, knows perfectly what they mean : capiicine, lilac, violet, 

 amaranth, bouton d'or (buttercup), feuille morte (filemot), 

 rose. The names of colours borrowed from fruits are equally 

 intelligible, — orange, lemon, plum, apricot, apple-green; but 

 there is a crowd of these whose denomination is absolutely 

 worth nothing, because it is drawn from objects which we 

 have seldom before our eyes, or which are conventional with- 

 out any existing type, such as Prussian blue, Eoyal blue, 

 French blue, &o. Naples yellow, Chrome yellow. Gold yeUow. 

 In addition to these words, which convey nothing fixed or 

 clear to the mind, there are between the shades of yellow 

 and blue which they designate, more than fifty intermediate 

 shades which there are no means of expressing. It is very 

 plain that blue signifies almost nothing, since an object may 

 have, at least, fifty diSerent manners of being blue. We 



