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,” “Condon 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 onlj^ 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 w r rong (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. 
