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This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1918 Excerpt: ...on account of the past sins of our forefathers and the present sinning of our nurserymen in miscalling it, banish this rich and distinctive colour with all the fine plants that it distinguishes, without some effort to provide for it the proper foils to fully develop its beauty. I would ask any one possessing Dr. Ridgeway's Colour Standards and Colour Nomenclature to open the book at Plate 24 and look at magenta in all its tender gradations of tint and shade. There is but one magenta, but about it are the gentle sisters of the discredited clan: Liseran purple and rose purple, dull and dusky purple, Indian lake, dahlia carmine, auricula purple, pale and deep Rosalane pink, all of which we are accustomed to lump as magenta. And on Plate 12 of that same chart there are yet others that come under the unjust ban: the mallow pinks and purples, amaranths and aster purple. These are beautiful colours as seen against the soft gray background of the page. Perhaps if we could strike out the word magenta, so laden with custom-made stigma, and use only these other colour names, all pleasant sounding and suggestive, we should lose much of the antipathy now felt for the flowers that wear it. When the early writers had magenta to name they usually wrote it as a little purple mixed with red, and to give it a more poetic but none the less exact description we might reverse Dante's idea of the colour of Apple blossoms-- more than that of roses but less than that of violets. In my garden I have been able to match but one flower to the magenta of the colour chart. This is the Rose Loosestrife (Lythrum Salicaria). It is pure magenta, but in eight catalogues examined it is described as rose pink, or bright pink. One seedsman ventures so near the ...

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