Page:Color standards and color nomenclature (Ridgway, 1912).djvu/30

 lished through common usage. This very important consideration has induced the author to retain such of the old standards as can be matched in the present work, even though some of them do not agree strictly with either his own or the usual conception of the colors in question. An asterisk (*) preceding a color name indicates that the name in question is adopted from the older work, the variation between different copies of the work requiring the selection, in the new one, of a color representing as nearly as possible an average of the former.

In any systematically arranged scheme, unless the number of colors shown is practically unlimited, it will, necessarily, be impossible to find represented thereon a certain proportion of colors comprised among even a very limited number selected at random, or only roughly classified. Hence many (thirty-six, or more than five per cent.) of the colors shown in the old "Nomenclature of Colors" fall into the blank intervals of the present work, being intermediate either in hue or tone, or chroma, sometimes all. It is necessary of course to provide some means for the correlation of these with the present scheme, which is done by the list on page 41, where the position of each is shown.

The question of giving representations of metallic colors in this work was at one time considered; but the idea was abandoned for the reason that these are in reality only ordinary colors reflected from a metallic or burnished surface, or appearing as if so reflected; the actual hue is precisely the same, though often changeable according to angle of impact of the light rays, and relative position of the eye, this changeableness being sometimes due to interference. Colors again vary, without actual difference of hue, in regard to quality of texture or surface; that is to say, the color may be quite