STILL WATERS 
179 
vellous complexity, and if one tries to trace 
the cause or give the reason for this or that 
effect, he soon finds himself involved in many 
contradictions. The determination of the local 
hue of lake water is, to start with, a difficult 
task. It may be almost any color, taking its 
hue from the vegetable or mineral matter car- 
ried in solution. Draining a marshy or heavily 
wooded district, it may be brownish or amber- 
hued, as in many of the smaller Adirondack 
and Scotch lakes; if the shores are rocky, or 
the country drained is hard and mountainous, 
the hue of the water will be blue or bluish- 
green, as one may see in the Alpine lakes, par- 
ticularly Lake Geneva. Again, in the Yellow- 
stone region the lakes are often of varied and 
brilliant hues owing to the earth or minerals in 
the water. 
But the actual color of the water when taken 
up in a vessel, and the apparent color lying in 
the bed of the lake, are two different things. 
Local color, especially if it be delicate, is in- 
fluenced, changed, oftentimes utterly destroyed 
so far as our vision is concerned, by back- 
grounds and reflections. or instance, the bed 
or bottom of a lake, where the water is shallow, 
may decide the apparent hue, just as the green 
Local color- 
ing of lake 
water. 
Vegetable 
and 
mineral 
colors. 
Colors of 
back- 
grounds. 
