Field's Chromatography

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and explains doubtless the term, double-dyed. The Greeks feigned the ancient purple to be the discovery of Hercules Tyrius, whose dog, eating by chance of the fish from which it was produced, returned to him with his mouth tinged with the dye. Alexander the Great is said to have found in the royal treasury, at the taking of Susa, purple to the enormous value of 5000 talents,[A] which had lain there one hundred and ninety-two years, and still preserved its freshness and beauty. When inclining to red, purple takes the name of _crimson_, &c.; and when leaning to blue, the names of _violet_, _lilac_, _mauve_, _&c._ Blue is a colour which it serves to mellow, or follows well into shade. The contrast or harmonizing colour of purple is yellow on the side of light and the primaries; while purple itself is the harmonizing contrast of the tertiary _citrine_ on the side of shade, and less perfectly so of the semi-neutral _brown_. As the extreme primaries, blue and yellow, when either compounded or opposed, afford, though not the most perfect harmony, yet the most pleasing consonance of the primary colours; so the extremes, purple and orange, yield the most pleasing of the secondary consonances. This analogy extends likewise to the extreme tertiary and semi-neutral colours, while the mean or middle colours furnish the most agreeable contrasts or harmonies. In nature pure purple is not a common colour, and on the palette purple pigments are singularly few. They lie under a peculiar disadvantage as to apparent durability and beauty of colour, owing to the neutralizing power of yellowness in the grounds upon which they are laid; as well as to the general warm colour of light, and the yellow tendency of almost all vehicles and varnishes, by which the colour of purple is subdued.


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