Various

“ White is therefore not a simple colour, but is merely the colour of sunlight, and probably owes its apparently homogeneous character to the fact that it is the average colour of the light which fills the eye when at rest. ”

“ The common Arabian coffee shrub is an evergreen plant, which under natural conditions grows to a height of from 18 to 20 ft., with oblong-ovate, acuminate, smooth and shining leaves, measuring about 6 in. in length by 21⁄2 wide. Its flowers, which are produced in dense clusters in the axils of the leaves, have a five-toothed calyx, a tubular five-parted corolla, five stamens and a single bifid style. The flowers are pure white in colour, with a rich fragrant odour, and the plants in blossom have a lovely and attractive appearance, but the bloom is very evanescent. ”

“ The question of the composition of colours is largely a physiological one, since it is possible, by mixing colours, say red and yellow, to produce a new colour, orange, which appears identical with the pure orange of the spectrum, but is physically quite different, since it can be resolved by a prism into red and yellow again. There is no doubt that the sensation of colour-vision is threefold, in the sense that any colour can be produced by the combination, in proper proportions, of three standard colours. ”

“ In the case of small unpalatable animals with warning colours the enemies would only first become aware of the unpleasant quality by tasting and often destroying their prey; but the species would gain by the experience thus conveyed, even though the individual might suffer. An insect-eating animal does not come into the world with knowledge: it has to be educated by experience, and warning colours enable this education as to what to avoid to be gained by a small instead of a large waste of life. Furthermore, great tenacity of life is usually possessed by animals with warning colours. ”

“ The duty of carrying the colours was always one of special danger, and sometimes, in the old short-range battles, every officer who carried a flag was shot. That this fate would necessarily overtake the bearer under modern conditions is far from certain, and in any case the few men on the enemy’s side who would be brave enough to shoot accurately under heavy shell fire would, however destructive to the colour party, scarcely inflict as much damage on the battalion as a whole, as a dozen or more accidental shells from the massed artillery of its own side. ”

“ The coloration of the surface of animals is caused either by pigments, or by a certain structure of the surface by means of which the light falling on it, or reflected through its superficial transparent layers, undergoes diffraction or other optical change. Or it may be the result of a combination of these two causes. It plays an important part in the relationship of the animal to its environment, in concealment, in mimicry, and so on; the presence of a pigment in the integument may also serve a more direct physiological purpose, such as a respiratory function. ”

“ North Park, the highest of all, is a lovely country of meadow and forest. Middle Park is not level, but is traversed thickly by low ranges like the Alleghanies; in the bordering mountain rim are several of the grandest mountain peaks and some of the most magnificent scenery of the state. Estes Park is small, only 20 m. long and never more than 2 m. broad; it is in fact the valley of Thompson Creek. Its surface is one of charming slopes, and by many it is accounted among the loveliest of Colorado valleys. Seven ranges lie between it and the plains. ”

“ Just as musical sounds differ in pitch, loudness and quality, so may colours differ in three respects, which Maxwell calls hue, shade and tint. All hues can be produced by combining every pair of primaries in every proportion. The addition of white alters the tint without affecting the hue. If the colour be darkened by adding black or by diminishing the illumination, a variation in shade is produced. Thus the hue red includes every variation in tint from red to white, and every variation in shade from red to black, and similarly for other hues. ”

“ On their west edge lies an abrupt, massive, and strangely uniform chain of mountains, known in the neighbourhood of Colorado Springs as the Rampart Range, and in the extreme north as the Front Range, and often denominated as a whole by the latter name. The upturning of the rocks of the Great Plains at the foot of the Front Range develops an interesting type of topography, the harder layers weathering into grotesquely curious forms, as seen in the famous Garden of the Gods at the foot of Pike’s Peak. Behind this barrier the whole country is elevated 2000 ft. ”

“ The isolation of these distant inland settlements has served to preserve the language, manners and physical characteristics of these early colonists with less variation than in any other Spanish-American state. They form an intelligent, high-spirited class of people, with all the defects and virtues of their ancestry. Their isolation has made them ignorant to some extent of the world’s progress, while a supersensitive patriotism blinds them to the discredit and disorganization which political strife and misrule have brought upon them. ”

“ Bodies may be classified as regards colour according to the nature of the action they exert on white light. In the case of ordinary opaque bodies a certain proportion of the incident light is irregularly reflected or scattered from their surfaces. A white object is one which reflects nearly all the light of all colours; a black object absorbs nearly all. A body which reflects only a portion of the light, but which exhibits no predominance in any particular hue, is called grey. ”

“ The old soldier rallied to the colours as a matter of habit in the confusion of battle, and the capture or the loss of a colour has always been considered a special event, glorious or the reverse, in the history of a regiment, the importance of this being chiefly sentimental, but having as a very real background the fact that, if its colour was lost, a regiment was to all intents and purposes dissolved and dispersed. ”

“ A great financial and fiscal reform at once claimed all his energies. Not only the nobility, but many others who had no legal claim to exemption, paid no taxes; the weight of the burden fell on the wretched country-folk. ”

“ The beetles are elegant insects with long, slender legs, running quickly, and flying in the sunshine. The pronotum and elytra are often adorned with bright colours or metallic lustre, and marked with stripes or spots. The beetles are fierce in nature and predaceous in habit, their sharp toothed mandibles being well adapted for the capture of small insect-victims. The larvae are more specialized than those of other Adephaga, the head and prothorax being very large and broad, the succeeding segments slender and incompletely chitinized. ”

“ As in Chile, the indifference of the ruling class to the welfare of the common people is a primary cause of their ignorance and poverty, to which must be added the apathy, if not opposition, of the Church. Under such conditions primary schools in the villages and rural districts were practically unknown, and the parish priest was the only educated person in the community. Nominally there was a school system under the supervision of the national and departmental governments, but its activities were limited to the larger towns, where there were public and private schools of all grades. ”

“ Complaint is also made that the head of a co-educational school for pupils over the age of 10 is usually a man, though the health and character of girls need the care and control of a woman vested with complete authority and responsibility. While demurring to the view that co-education of the sexes would be a moral panacea, the critics of the system admit that the presence of the girls would exert a refining influence, but they believe that on the whole the boys are likely to gain less from co-education than the girls are likely to lose by it. ”

“ From the physical point of view, light of a pure colour, or homogeneous light, means light whose undulations are mathematically of a simple character and which cannot be resolved by a prism into component parts. All the visible pure colours, as thus defined, are to be found in the spectrum, and there is an infinite number of them, corresponding to all the possible variations of wave-length within the limits of the visible spectrum (see Spectroscopy) . ”

“ Jamaica produces the famous Blue Mountain Coffee, which compares favourably with the best coffees of the world, and also ordinary or “plain grown”; the Blue Mountain is cultivated at elevations of from 3000 to 4500 ft. Coffee usually ranks third or fourth in value amongst the exports of the island.
Africa, the native country of the coffees, does not now contribute any important amount to the world’s output. In Liberia, the Gold Coast and elsewhere on the West Coast are many plantations, but the low prices ruling of recent years have caused coffee to be neglected for more remunerative crops. ”

“ Where, however, a married woman commits a crime in the presence of her husband, she is generally presumed to have acted by his coercion, and to be entitled to acquittal, but this presumption does not extend to grave crimes, nor to those in which the principal part may be supposed to be taken by the woman, such as keeping a brothel. In civil matters, such as the making of a contract, where the law requires the free assent of the person who undertakes the obligation, coercion is a ground for invalidating the instrument. ”

“ The combined fleets of France and Spain, after spreading terror throughout the West Indies, returned to Cadiz. On their way thither they bore down upon Admiral Collingwood, who had only three vessels with him; but he succeeded in eluding the pursuit, although chased by sixteen ships of the line. Ere one-half of the enemy had entered the harbour he drew up before it and resumed the blockade, at the same time employing an ingenious artifice to conceal the inferiority of his force. But the combined fleet was at last compelled to quit Cadiz; and the battle of Trafalgar immediately followed. ”

“ The relationship between these classes has been explained: mimicry is, as Wallace has stated (Darwinism, London, 1889) , merely “an exceptional form of protective resemblance. “Now, protective (cryptic) resemblance cannot be explained on any of the lines suggested above, except natural selection; even sexual selection fails, because cryptic resemblance is especially common in the immature stages of insect life. But it would be unreasonable to explain mimetic resemblance by one set of principles and cryptic by another and totally different set. ”

“ The Caribbean coast of Colombia has only four ports engaged in international trade—Barranquilla, Cartagena, Santa Marta and Rio Hacha. There are some smaller ports on the coast, but they are open only to vessels of light draft and have no trade worth mention. Barranquilla, the principal port of the republic, is situated on the Magdalena, and its seaport, or landing-place, is Puerto Colombia at the inner end of Savanilla Bay, where a steel pier 4000 ft. long has been built out to deep water, alongside which ocean-going vessels can receive and discharge cargo. ”

“ Special resemblance is far commoner than general, and is the form which is usually met with on the diversified surface of the earth, on the shores, and in shallow water, as well as on the floating masses of Algae on the surface of the ocean, such as the Sargasso Sea. In these environments the cryptic colouring of animals is usually aided by special modifications of shape, and by the instinct which leads them to assume particular attitudes. ”

“ COCKATRICE, a fabulous monster, the existence of which was firmly believed in throughout ancient and medieval times,—descriptions and figures of it appearing in the natural history works of such writers as Pliny and Aldrovandus, those of the latter published so late as the beginning of the 17th century. Produced from a cock’s egg hatched by a serpent, it was believed to possess the most deadly powers, plants withering at its touch, and men and animals dying poisoned by its look. ”

“ The Colorado in its course below the junction has formed a region that is one of the most wonderful of the world, not only for its unique and magnificent scenery, but also because it affords the most remarkable example known of the work of differential weathering and erosion by wind and water and the exposure of geologic strata on an enormous scale. Above the Paria the river flows through scenery comparatively tame until it reaches the plateau of the Marble Canyon, some 60 m. in length. The walls here are at first only a few score of feet in height, but increase rapidly to almost 5000 ft. ”

“ At Oxford and Cambridge women are not admitted as members of the university, but by courtesy enjoy entrance to practically all university lectures and examinations. The social life of the men and women students is more separate in the old than in the new universities. In no grade of education in the United Kingdom has the principle of co-education made more rapid advance than in the universities. ”

“ As there are no authoritative general principles, it happens that the few legal maxims known to the public, being apprehended out of relation to their authorities, are as often likely to be wrong as to be right. It is hopeless to think of making it possible for every man to be his own lawyer, but we can at least try to make it possible for a lawyer to know the whole law. The earlier advocates of codification founded their case mainly on the evils of judiciary law, i.e. the law contained in the reported decisions of the judges. Bentham’s bitter antipathy to judicial legislation is well known. ”

“ Use of Colour for Warning and Signalling, or Sematic Coloration.—The use of colour for the purpose of warning is the exact opposite of the one which has been just described, its object being to render the animal conspicuous to its enemies, so that it can be easily seen, well remembered, and avoided in future. Warning colours are associated with some quality or weapon which renders the possessor unpleasant or dangerous, such as unpalatability, an evil odour, a sting, the poison-fang, &c. ”

“ The principal rivers of the Amazon system are the Napo, the upper part of which forms the provisional boundary line with Ecuador, the Putumayo or Iça, and the Caqueta or Japurá (Yapurá) , which flow from the Andes entirely across the eastern plains, and the Guainia, which rises on the northern slopes of the Serra Tunaji near the provisional Brazilian frontier, and flows with a great northward curve to the Venezuelan and Brazilian frontiers, and is thereafter known as the Rio Negro, one of the largest tributaries of the Amazon. ”

“ On the other hand, those who oppose co-education in secondary schools rest their case upon the danger of the intellectual or physical overstrain of girls during adolescence; and upon the unequal rate of development of boys and girls during the secondary school period, the girls being more forward than the boys at first, but as a rule less able to work as hard at a somewhat later stage. ”

“ The rainfall is heavy in the wet season, causing many of the rivers to spread over extensive areas, but in the dry season the inundated plains become dry, the large rivers fed by the snows and rainfall of the Andes return within their banks, the shallow lagoons and smaller streams dry up, vegetation disappears, and the level plain becomes a desert. The northern plains of the republic are swept by the north-east trades, and here, too, the mountain barriers exercise a strongly modifying influence. ”

“ At the time of the Spanish Conquest the most important of these tribes was the Muyscas or Chibchas, who inhabited the tablelands of Bogotá and Tunja, and had attained a considerable degree of civilization. They lived in settled communities, cultivated the soil to some extent, and ascribed their progress toward civilization to a legendary cause remarkably similar to those of the Aztecs of Mexico and the Incas of Peru. They are represented by some tribes living on the head-waters of the Meta, 706 and their blood flows in the veins of the mestizos of the Bogotá plateau. ”