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THE AMERICAN NATURALIST [Vol. XLII 



COLOR NOMENCLATURE FOR NATURALISTS 

 A Code of Colors for Naturalists. 1 — In 1905 Dr. R. M. Strong 

 called attention in Science (Vol. XXI, pp. 267-268) to the avaif- 

 ability for naturalists' use of the Bradley Educational Colored 

 Papers. Little books containing about 165 samples of these 

 papers may be had for five cents from dealers in kindergarten 

 supplies. Since Ridgway's "A Nomenclature of Colors for 

 Naturalists" went out of print, there has been no convenient 

 and rapid means of designating colors with precision other than 

 by the use of the Bradley papers. 



The present work attempts to furnish to all who have to 

 designate colors with precision a simple, practical and unmis- 

 takable means of indicating them. This is accomplished by 

 supplying, at a low price, a book of convenient size for the pocket 

 m which are contained a sufficient number of samples of dif- 

 ferent colors arranged in accordance with a recognized scientific 

 plan and prepared with materials as durable as our knowledge 

 of chemistry permits. All names of colors are rejected except 

 those of the six spectral colors, red, orange, yellow, green, blue 

 and violet. Thus is avoided the confusion inseparable from the 

 use of names for colors. The scheme includes 24 1 1 pure ' ' colors, 

 the six colors of the spectrum named above ; six other colors 

 obtained by combining the adjacent spectral colors to produce 

 intermediate colors called red-orange, orange-yellow, yellow- 

 green, green-blue, blue-violet and violet-rod; and twelve other 

 colors intermediate between the twelve above named. Thus 

 between red and red-orange there intervenes a lighter red 

 between red-orange and orange a lighter red-orange, so that the 

 order of the twenty-four colors is as follows: red, red, red- 

 orange, red-orange, orange, orange, orange-yellow, orange-yellow, 

 yellow, yellow, etc. Each color is intermediate between that 

 which precedes and that which follows it. Each of the twenty- 

 four pure colors is made the basis of a double page of samples 

 •m which ,t appears along with twenty-nine tints, shades and 

 broken colors produced by mixing the pure color with white, 

 black or gray. Twenty-four of these tints and shades 

 and broken colors, in which the white and black are 



