Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 5.djvu/143

Rh Traveling on a June day from Bangor to Boston, we observed all the meadows and waste fields through the shale region of Central Maine overrun with bulbous crowfoot—the Ranunculus bulbosus. The face of the earth over large patches was literally green and yellow, and the chromatic effect began to tell very unpleasantly on the eye. Passing from the shale into a region of granite we found the butter-cups giving place to the white-weed (Leucanthemum vulgare). Over the pastures of Massachusetts this was as common as the buttercup in Maine, and the face of the earth was now white and green. The relief was felt at once. It was now a pleasure to look on the meadows. And yet the pleasure would have been still greater if the leaves and grass had been light blue instead of green, as white and light blue are in still better accord than white and green. But we will not be over-critical. A lady in white can wear a scarf, or sash, or breast-knot, of any color she may wish; and Nature, if she decks herself in white flowers, may set them in green, or brown, or red, or any tint she will, and there will be no discord.

The discords we have considered are between the flower and the foliage. There are others in the flower itself.

In the sweet-pea we have red and violet, a juxtaposition as discordant as that of green and blue. The bird-foot violet has the two upper petals of deep violet, the others of lilac-purple or blue—another discord. And such a collocation produces not merely a chromatic discord. Rays of blue and violet, entering the eye together, cause fluorescence of the cornea and crystalline lens. These parts become faintly luminous by the absorption of such light, and vision is rendered imperfect.

All this may seem fanciful. A field of green and yellow may appear to most eyes as pleasing as one of green and white. A violet, colored in violet and blue, may be called as beautiful as a calypso, in yellow and purple. But eyes which cannot see chromatic discord cannot see chromatic harmony. If a bad picture does not offend the taste, a good one cannot gratify it. There lies on our table a magazine printed in colored inks, an effort, the publisher tells us, to supplant the old monotony of black and white, and to minister to our love of color. It has a yellow cover bordered with scarlet and labeled in green! Flowers may not be guilty of chromatic offenses so atrocious as this, but such offenses they certainly do commit.

What is the end of floral decoration? By the old way of interpreting Nature, the botanist would have said, "To gratify man's love of the beautiful." He would not give such an answer now. If he would explain why certain flowers are not colored at all, and how it has come about that other flowers are colored, some in chromatic harmony, and others not, he must look to the flowers themselves, and to their servants the insects. Every one knows that the pollen must find its way from the anther to the stigma, else the flower, lacking