84 A TOUR ROUND MT GARDEN. 



have bestowed upon eact colour two demi-tones, as we have 

 to each note of music ; we say deep blue and clear blue, as 

 we say A sharp, or B flat. I don't know whether musicians 

 are satisfied with these divisions, but, to a certainty, colourists 

 are not. There are thirty different clear blues, and as many 

 deep blues. Besides, how can we hit upon the right note? 

 What, in colours, is the blue natural, the true blue, the 

 natural blue f It becomes clear, then, that colours can only 

 be expressed by comparisons, and the most limited capacity 

 can comprehend that these comparisons ought to be taken 

 from objects which are most familiar to us, and which vary 

 the least. Flowers present us with these two advantages, 

 and, in addition, that of containing in the same order of 

 things and ideas all colours and all possible shades. 



Red strikes man more than any of the other colours ; it is 

 admired by children and savages. Some of its different shades 

 have, consequently, been distinguished, and names given to 

 them ; there is no other colour for which ordinary language 

 furnishes so many, — crimson, scarlet, carmine, purple, carna- 

 tion, vermilion, and several others ; but even these denomi- 

 nations convey a vague idea to the mind, and it is difficult to 

 make three persons agree as to the precise meaning of them. 

 Ask the learned what was the precise shade of the purple of 

 the ancients. 



There are numberless shades that have no names at all. 

 Let us take for example the least common colour among 

 flowers, blue, and let us begin our gamut. Certain hyacinths 

 wiU first give you a white scarcely tinged with blue; the 

 Parma violet is of an extremely pale lapis blue ; then comes 

 the blue geranium of the meadows, then the Chinese Wistaria, 

 then the blossom of the flax ; then come in order of shades 

 the Forget-me-not, Borage, Bugloss, Sage, the Cornflower, 

 the Nemophylla, the Anagallis Morelli, the Plumbago Car- 

 pentse ; the long-leaved Larkspur, with single flowers, and then 

 with double ones, which is of a metallic blue ; and at last, as 

 the deepest shade of dark blue, almost black, the berries of 

 the Laurustinus. 



If these designations were in use, they would give im- 

 mutable ideas of colours, by means of a language for which 

 no word has to be imagined, or a barbarism created: at a 



