COLOR STANDARDS
AND
COLOR NOMENCLATURE
RIDGWAY
Fifty-Three Colored Plates
Eleven Hundred and Fifteen Named Colors
COLOR STANDARDS
AND
COLOR NOMENCLATURE
BY
ROBERT RIDGWAY, M.S., C.M.Z.S., Etc.
Curator of the Division of Birds, United States
National Museum.
With Fifty-three Colored Plates
and
Eleven Hundred and Fifteen Named Colors.
WASHINGTON. D. C.
1912.
Published by the Author.
Copyright, 1912
by
Robert Ridgway
PRESS OF
A. HOEN & COMPANY
BALTIMORE, MD
TO
Señor Don JOSÉ C. ZELEDÓN
OF
San José, Costa Rica
True and steadfast friend for more than two-score years;host, guide, and companion on excursions among theglorious forests, magnificent mountains, and lovelyplains of his native land; whose encouragement madepossible the completion of a seemingly hopeless task,this book is affectionately and gratefully dedicated.
PREFACE
The motive of this work is THE STANDARDIZATION OFCOLORS AND COLOR NAMES.
The terminology of Science, the Arts, and various Industrieshas been a most important factor in the development oftheir present high efficiency. Measurements, weights, mathematicaland chemical formulæ, and terms which clearly designatepractically every variation of form and structure have long beenstandardized; but the nomenclature of colors remains vague and,for practical purposes, meaningless, thereby seriously impedingprogress in almost every branch of industry and research.
Many works on the subject of color have been published, but most ofthem are purely technical, and pertain to the physics of color, thepainter's needs, or to some particular art or industry alone, or inother ways are unsuited for the use of the zoologist, the botanist,the pathologist, or the mineralogist; and the comparatively few workson color intended specially for naturalists have all failed to meetthe requirements, either because of an insufficient number of colorsamples, lack of names or other means of easy identification ordesignation, or faulty selection and classification of the colorschosen for illustration. More than twenty years ago the author of thepresent work attempted to supply the deficiency by the publication ofa book[1] containing 186 samples of named[ii]colors, but the effort was successful only to the extent that it wasan improvement on its predecessors; and, although still the standardof color nomenclature among zoologists and many other naturalists, itnevertheless is seriously defective in the altogether inadequatenumber of colors represented, and in their unscientificarrangement. Fully realizing his failure, the author, some two orthree years later, began to devise plans, gather materials, andacquire special knowledge of the subject, in the hope that he mightsome day be able to prepare a new work which would full