150 
406. This enumeration of the principal, or funda- 
mental colours of vegetables, will recall to the mind 
of many readers, the system of colours, which the 
celebrated Werner has contrived, and applied to the 
description of the bodies which compose the mineral 
kingdom. The colours of minerals yield, perhaps, 
neither in number, in diversity, nor in splendour, to 
those which vegetables present ; yet they are all re- 
duced to eight, which are regarded as standard or 
simple colours. These colours are white, grey, 
black, blue, green, yellow, red, and brown. Al- 
though several of these are physically compound, 
yet, for the purposes of description, it is convenient 
to regard each as simple, and as constituting, in its 
pure and unmixed state, what may be denominated 
the characteristic colour. To these eight fundamental 
colours, Werner refers all the variety of compound 
colours which minerals present, employing the pre- 
dominating colour to express the chief character, and 
qualifying it by the others, according to the quantity 
in which they appear to enter into the compound *. 
If, from the enumeration of Geoffroy, we reject one 
of the yellows as superfluous, his number of funda- 
mental colours will agree with hat of Werner ; and 
even their characters will differ only in two instan- 
ces, M. Geoffroy considering violet as a characte- 
ristic, or simple colour, which Werner describes as 
a compound of blue, red, and brown ; and the latter 
* Jameson's Treatise on the Ext. Characters of Minerals. 
p. 2. 
