PREFACE 



THE motive of this work is THE STANDARDIZATION OF 

 COLORS AND COLOR NAMES. 



The terminology of Science, the Arts, and various In- 

 dustries has been a most important factor in the development of 

 their present high efficiency. Measurements, weights, mathemat- 

 ical and chemical formulae, and terms which clearly designate 

 practically every variation of form and structure have long been 

 standardized ; but the nomenclature of colors remains vague and, 

 for practical purposes, meaningless, thereby seriously impeding 

 progress in almost every branch of industry and research. 



Many works on the subject of color have been published, but 

 most of them are purely technical, and pertain to the physics of 

 color, the painter's needs, or to some particular art or industry 

 alone, or in other ways are unsuited for the use of the zoologist, 

 the botanist, the pathologist, or the mineralogist ; and the compar- 

 atively few works on color intended specially for naturalists have 

 all failed to meet the requirements, either because of an insufficient 

 number of color samples, lack of names or other means of easy 

 identification or designation, or faulty selection and classification 

 of the colors chosen for illustration. More than twenty years ago 

 the author of the present work attempted to supply the deficiency 

 by the publication of a book* containing 186 samples of named 



*A | Nomenclature of Colors | for Naturalists, | and | Compendium of Useful 

 Knowledge | for Ornithologists. | By | Robert Ridgway, | Curator, Department of 

 Birds, United States National Museum. | With ten colored plates and seven plates | of 

 outline illustrations. | Boston: | Little, Brown, and Company. | 1886. | (12mo., pp. 

 129, pis. 17.) 



The subject of color and color nomenclature discussed on pages 15-58. Plates 

 i-x, inclusive, represent 186 named colors, hand-painted (stencilled). 



