Black For Of Such Subdued Tones Are Those Greens By Which The More

: ON THE SECONDARY, GREEN.

vivid tints of nature are opposed. Accordingly, the various greens of

foliage are always more or less semi-neutral in hue. As green is the

most general colour of vegetal nature and principal in foliage; so red,

its harmonizing colour, with compounds of red, is most general and

principal in flowers. Purple flowers are commonly contrasted with

centres or variegations of bright yellow, as blue flowers are with like

reliev ngs of orange; and there is a prevailing hue, or character, in

the green colour of the foliage of almost every plant, by which it is

harmonized with the colours of its flowers.



The chief discord of green is blue; and when they approximate or

accompany each other, they require to be resolved by the opposition of

warm colours. It is in this way that the warmth of distance and the

horizon reconciles the azure of the sky with the greenness of a

landscape. Its less powerful discord is yellow, which needs to be

similarly resolved by a purple-red, or its principles. In tone, green is

cool or warm, sedate or gay, either as it inclines to blue or to yellow;

yet in its general effects it is cool, calm, temperate, and refreshing.

Having little power in reflecting light, it is a retiring colour, and

readily subdued by distance: for the same reason, it excites the retina

less than most colours, and is cool and grateful to the eye. As a colour

individually, green is eminently beautiful and agreeable, but it is more

particularly so when contrasted by its compensating colour, red, as it

often is in nature, even in the green leaves and young shoots of plants

and trees. "The autumn only is called the painter's season," remarks

Constable, "from the great richness of the colours of the dead and

decaying foliage, and the peculiar tone and beauty of the skies; but the

spring has, perhaps, more than an equal claim to his notice and

admiration, and from causes not wholly dissimilar,--the great variety of

tints and colours of the living foliage, accompanied by their flowers

and blossoms. The beautiful and tender hues of the young leaves and

buds are rendered more lovely by being contrasted, as they now are, with

the sober russet browns of the stems from which they shoot, and which

still show the drear remains of the season that is past."



The number of pigments of any colour is in general proportioned to its

importance; hence the variety of greens is very great, though the

classes of those in common use are not very numerous. Of the three

secondaries, green is the colour most often met with, and, consequently,

the most often compounded: for this last reason, perhaps, the palette is

somewhat deficient in really good original greens--more deficient than

there is any necessity for.





TTITLE CHROME OXIDES.



By numerous methods both wet and dry, oxides of chromium are obtainable

pale and deep, bright and subdued, warm and cool, opaque and

transparent: sometimes hydrated, in which case they cannot be employed

in enamelling; and sometimes anhydrous, when they are admissible

therein. But whatever their properties may be, chemical, physical, or

artistic, they are all strictly stable. Neither giving nor receiving

injury by admixture, equally unaffected by foul gas and exposure to

light, air, or damp, these oxides are perfectly unexceptionable in every

respect. For the most part they are eligible in water and oil, drying

well in the latter vehicle, and requiring in the former much gum. They

have long been known as affording pure, natural, and durable tints; but,

until within the last few years, have been rather fine than brilliant

greens. Lately, however, processes have been devised, yielding them

almost as bright, rich, and transparent, as the carmine of cochineal

itself.



TTITLE OXIDE OF CHROMIUM,