THE NATURALIST.

Otago Witness, Issue 1973, 12 September 1889, Page 37

THE NATURALIST.

Contrast of Colours in Nature.

Nature is very sparing of showy Contrasts of warm and cold dolours. Eed and blue are very rare, and of yellow and blue the cases are but few, and black and blue are found in lepidoptera more often than white and blue are seen in our flora or fauna. It is not uncommon for one of two strong oolours to be overcast with a tinge of its fellow, or for both of them to be reconciled by a common touch of black or of some third^colour, or for one of them to be lightened by a dash of white, while the other is lowered by as much black, and so red, off-hued with black — russet and green unbrightened with white — often meet in the autumn in dead and dying patches of fading leaves. It may be shown, I believe, by the refractions of light in crystallised gypsum, that brown is the complementary colour to lavender grey ; and how true to herself is Nature we may go forth and see in the fall of year, in the dead and curled leaves of the mugwort, or meadow-sweet, which are beautiful even in their death, with one side brown and the other the brown matching grey ; and if brambles be cut in the leafgreeny season, their two surfaces soon wither into the harmony of grey and brown.

And what use are we to make of these hues of Nature 1 They are warrants for a grey mantle under locks of brown hair, or a brown bonnet or trimmings, or a grey room wall with brown furniture ; and if, on a hot summer's day, I see the dark leaf shades playing on the grey bark of a young beech, I can boldly lay darkish leaf shades on a wall of the beech bark's hue ; or if, after the winter rains, I find a barkless pole in railings tinted with the palest blue-grey, and on breaking off a splinter of it I find its inner wood of its true colour, brown-yellow, why. should I not take the inner tint for my wall and the outer one for the skirting 1 Or if I pick up a piece of lichen of dull green on one side and dull grey on the other, why should I not bind my book in one colour and lay it on a lettering piece of the other ? Nature is the best school of art, and of schools of art among men those are the best that are Nature's best interpreters.

All colours have their complementaries, which add to or detract from the beauty of the adjoining colours, according to what they may be. Thus the complementaries of red are green ; blue are orange"; yellow are violet. If you cut out pieces of grey paper in an ornamental form, and stick a piece on each of the three colours I have named, you will find, in a shaded light, the grey will be fully tinted by the complementaries of these colours. But you cannot lay down precise rules. An experienced artist can bring any two colours together by properly modulating them. Nothing is so charming and so refreshing to the eye as a harmonious arrangement of colours. They are " like a sweet chord of music to the sense." The hand of Nature never errs, whether it brings together scarlet and crimson, as in the cactus ; scarlet and purple, as in the fuchsia ; yellow and orange, as in the calceolaria ; or the colours in the varied plumage of exotic birds — the harmony is always beautiful, ever perfect. The laws of harmonious colouring are a necessary part of the knowledge of the manufacturers of coloured fabrics. I will suggest a few contrasts : 1. Black and warm brown. 2. Violet and pale green. 3. Violet and light rose-colour. 4. Deep blue and golden brown. 4. Chocolate and bright blue. 6. Deep red and grey. 7. Maroon and warm green. 8. Deep blue and pink. 9. Chocolate and pea-green. 10. Maroon and deep blue. 11. Claret and buff. 12. Black and warm green — J. G. Grace, London Architect.