Page:The New International Encyclopædia 1st ed. v. 03.djvu/229

* BLUE. 199 BLUEBEARD. I BLUE (from Fr. bleu, in itself borrowed from the Germanic nations ; OHG. blao, AS. blOic, Ger. blau). A primary color of the same shade as the clear sky and the turquoise, and located in the solar spectrum after the green and be- fore the violet. This color has been conspicu- ously used as a badge to designate military bodies. It was the favorite color of the Scottish fovenanters in the Seventeenth Century, when it was called 'true bine' and is the color commonly worn by the soldiers of the United States Army. The sailors of most navies are dressed in imifornis of a darker color, called navy blue. Among blue minerals, the sapphire and the turquoise are highly valued as gems; the lapis-lazuli has been extensively used for orna- mental purposes. The coloring matter of blue flowers is due to a pigment called anthociiaitin. Among the more import-ant blue pigments are the following: Antwerp blue, a mixture of Prus- sian blue and alumina : axiire blue, a cobalt oxide fused with glass and ground to powder; Berlin blue, another name for both Antwerp blue and Prussian blue; bice blue, originally native azurite powdered and washed, more com- monly, however, a preparation of smalt; Bremen blue, chalk or whiting mixed with a solution of copper in nitric acid; China blue, crude cobalt oxide ground with potash and mixed with feld- spar, fused, and powdered ; cobalt blue, 10 parts of aluminum mixed with 1 part of a cobalt salt. slowly dried, and heated to a dull redness and ground to powder; king's blue, a cobalt car- bonate; mountain blue, native copper carbonate or azurite; mineral blue, a synonym for Ant- werp blue; Paris blue, a synonym for both cobalt blue and Prussian blue: Prussian blue is iron ferrocj-anide made by adding potassium ferro- eyanide to a solution of ferrous sulphate, and the resulting precipitate washed and dried : queen blue, a synonym for lump blue used in laun- dries (bluing) ; Saunders blue, ultramarine ashes obtained from the resinous mass in making ultramarine; Saxon {i/) blue, Prussian bluo and aluminum hydrate; smalt, a cobalt ore heated with Hint and potash, and gi'ound to a pow- der; Thenard blue, a synonym for cobalt blue; ultramarine, originally prepared from lapis- lazuli. but now made synthetically by heating together kaolin, sodium sulphate, sodium car- bonale. sulphur, and charcoal, then pulverizing, washing, and drying. Among the dyestufl's that yield a blue color are tlie following, the oriirin of many of which is indicated by their names: Alizarin blue: aniline blue: anthracene blue; ehcmie blue, a solution of indigo; Coup- ler's blue, derived from induline; dahlia blue, derived from rosaniline; ethylene blue, derived from diethylaniliuc; indigo blue, originally de- rived froni the indigo plant and now made synthetically; loguocd blue, an extract of log- wood; niell'inlenc blue, derived from methylani- line; night blue, derived from rosaniline; resor- cine blue, derived from phenol ; soluble blue, de- rived from rrtsaniline; and Victoria blue, derived from rosaniline. Blue Stone, or Blue Vitriol, is the commercial name for copper sul])hate. BLUE, Victor (ISO.'i — ). An American naval othcer, born in North Carolina. He graduated at the United States Naval Academy at Annapolis in 1887, served on the Suwanee in the Spanish- American War, and attracted general attention in .June, 1898, by penetrating seventy-two miles within the Spanish lines in the vicinity of San- tiago, Cuba, and definitely determining for the first time the presence of the Spanish fleet in Santiago Harbor. After the battle of Santiago he was placed in command of the Alvarado, a gunboat captured from the Spanish, and on August 12, 1898, participated in the attack upon the Spanish batteries at JIanzanillo. In I'JOO he sen'ed as ilag-lieutenant on the staff of Rear- Admiral Kempff during the Boxer disturbances in China, and subsequently was assigned to duty in the Philippines. BLUE AND THE GBAY, The. A well- known [loem by Judge Francis Miles Finch (1807), published in the Atlantic Monthly, and based on the decoration of the graves of Federal and Confederate soldiers in a Southern cemetery. BLUEBACK. The name of various fishes having bluish backs; specifically, the Fraser River salmon [Oncorhynchus nerka), of the northwest coast of America. See Salmon. BLUEBEARD. A fictitious hero of the fa- miliar tale which in the Eighteenth Centui-y found its way into English from the French of Charles Perrault (c.l697). In this story, the Chevalier Raoul, whose surname is due to the color of his beard, had married seven wives. Six of these had mysteriously disappeared, and the seventh is represented as subjected to a singu- lar test of obedience. Having occasion to go away, Raoul commits to Fatima the keys of his castle, and enjoins her that, though she may otherwise have free course, she must not open a certain chamber. Her curiosity is enhanced by her loneliness, and proves too strong for her. Opening the door, she beholds the charnel-house, where lie the bones of her predecessors. Her lord returns, discovers her disobedience by the blood upon the key, and tells her that in five minutes she must die. From the top of the castle, however, her sister Anne observes horse- men approaching in the distance, who are the brothers of the ill-fated wife, and they arrive just in time to rescue their sister by slaying Bluebeard. Though Bluebeard is imaginary, there is thought to be a historic prototype in Gilles de Laval, Baron de Retz (1396-1440). He fought like the brave man he was against the English in their invasion of his country; but his intrepidity pales before his diabolical cruelties, and it is by these that he is remem- bered. Because of some disloyalty to the Duke of Brittany, he was burned alive near Nantea in 1440. That Laval is the original of Bluebeard is conjecture at best, and from the fact that the story is found with more or less variety of de- tail in the folklore of dill'erent peoples, this doubt is enhanced. Besides the French version of Perrault, there are tales of a similar kind in Straparola's Piace- loli nolti (lolj'.l). and in the Pentamerone of Gian Alesio Abbatutis. There is at Morbihan an interesting pictorial representation in some frescoes of the Thirteenth Century, mentioned by Violeau in his Pilerinages de Brctaync. And it has been pointed out that the resemblance is very close to the Arabian Nights' tale of the Third Calender. In his Phantasus Tieck has wrought the matter into a clever drama; Gretry has, in his Raoul Barbe-Bleur (1789), given it the setting of comic opera; Offenbach produced