WHERE COLOUR COMES FROM

Sun (Auckland), Volume 1, Issue 7, 30 March 1927, Page 5

WHERE COLOUR COMES FROM

Colour comes from the sunlight; it is in the sunshine before it is in the flowers. All the colours of the rainbow are in the sunshine, and the rainbow shows what colours there are. We generally say that the rainbow has seven colours, violet, indigo, blue, green, yellow, orange, and red. Sometimes you see these colours when the sunlight shines upon a cut glass lustre or the bevelled edge of a mirror. Drops of water in the rain cloud and thick cut glass with slanting edges have the power of splitting up the white sunshine, and showing what colours it is made of. All the multitude of colour-shades in all the sunlit world are made from these colours of the rainbow. The sunlight comes to the flower with its offering of colours, and the flower chooses in what shade it will be dressed. A red rose appears that colour to us because it has taken to itself all the colours except red, which It sends back as a ray of reflected light. It is this ray that tints the rose. In the same way, the violet returns the blue part of white light, and so becomes blue. A white lily has kept no special colour for itself, but has given back the whole offering for flowers. Thus it can only remain white.