Page:Micrographia - or some physiological descriptions of minute bodies made by magnifying glasses with observations and inquiries thereupon.djvu/128

Rh well colour'd Yellow, and further and further from the edge, as the liquor grew thicker and thicker, this tincture appear'd deeper and deeper, so that near the blunt end, which was seven Inches from the edge and three Inches and an half thick; it was of a deep and well colour'd Red. Now, the clearer and purer this tincture be, the more lovely will the deep Scarlet be, and the fouler the tincture be, the more dirty will the Red appear; so that some dirty tinctures have afforded their deepest Red much of the colour of burnt Oker or Spanish brown; others as lovely a colour as Vermilion, and some much brighter; but several others, according as the tinctures were worse or more foul, exhibited various kinds of Reds, of very differing degrees.

The other of these Wedges, I fill'd with a most lovely tincture of Copper, drawn from the filings of it, with spirit of Urine, and this Wedge held as the former against the Light, afforded all manner of Blues, from the faintest to the deepest, so that I was in good hope by these two, to have produc'd all the varieties of colours imaginable; for I thought by this means to have been able by placing the two Parallelogram sides together, and the edges contrary ways, to have so mov'd them to and fro one by another, as by looking through them in several places, and through several thicknesses, I should have compounded, and consequently have seen all those colours, which by other like compositions of colours would have ensued.

But insteed of meeting with what I look'd for, I met with somewhat more admirable; and that was, that I found my self utterly unable to see through them when placed both together, though they were transparent enough when asunder; and though I could see through twice the thickness, when both of them were fill'd with the same colour'd liquors, whether both with the Yellow, or both with the Blue, yet when one was fill'd with the Yellow, the other with the Blue, and both looked through, they both appear'd dark, onely when the parts near the tops were look'd through, they exhibited Greens, and those of very great variety, as I expected, but the Purples and other colours, I could not by any means make, whether I endeavour'd to look through them both against the Sun, or whether I plac'd them against the hole of a darkned room.

But notwithstanding this mis-ghessing, I proceeded on with my trial in a dark room, and having two holes near one another, I was able, by placing my Wedges against them, to mix the ting'd Rays that past through them, and fell on a sheet of white Paper held at a convenient distance from them as I pleas'd; so that I could make the Paper appear of what colour I would, by varying the thicknesses of the Wedges, and consequently the tincture of the Rays that past through the two holes, and sometimes also by varying the Paper, that is, insteed of a white Paper, holding a gray, or a black piece of Paper.

Whence I experimentally found what I had before imagin'd, that all the varieties of colours imaginable are produc'd from several degrees of these two colours, namely, Yellow and Blue, or the mixture of them with light and darkness, that is, white and black. And all those almost infinite varieties which Limners and Painters are able to make by Rh