Trade Names of Colors. 13 



and most of them vague and variable in their application. 

 Most of them are invented, apparently without care or 

 judgment, by the dyer or manufacturer of fabrics, and 

 are as capricious in their meaning as in their origin ; 

 for example : Such fanciful names as "zulu," "serpent 

 green," "baby blue," "new old rose," "London smoke," 

 etc., and such nonsensical names as "ashes of roses" 

 and "elephant's breath." An inspection of the sample 

 books of manufacturers of fancy goods (such as em- 

 broidery silks and crewels, ribbons, velvets, and other 

 dress- and upholstery-goods) is sufficient not only to 

 illustrate the above observations, but to show also the 

 absolute want of system or classification and the 

 general unavailability of these trade names for adoption 

 in a practical color nomenclature. This is very un- 

 fortunate, since many of these trade names have the 

 merit of brevity and euphony and lack only the quality 

 of stability 



It has been difficult for the author to decide whether 

 the standards of his original "Nomenclature of Colors" 

 (1886) should be retained in the present work. Some of 

 them are admittedly wrong (indeed, certain ones are not 

 as they were intended to be); besides, owing to the 

 method of reproducing the originals (hand stenciling) 

 there is considerable variation in different copies of the 

 book, one or more reprints, necessitating new mixtures 

 of pigments, adding to this lack of uniformity.* Many 

 persons, however, have urged the retention of the old 

 standards, on the ground that they have been used by 

 so many zoologists and botanists in their writings during 

 the last twenty-five years that they have become estab- 



*In the present work the possibility of variation between different copies is 

 wholly eliminated by a very different process of reproduction. Each color, for the 

 entire edition, is painted uniformly on large sheets of paper from a single mixture 

 of pigments, these sheets being then cut into the small squares which represent the 

 colors on the plates. 



