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The symbolism of colour cover

The symbolism of colour

Chapter 17: APPENDIX VI (p. 4)
By Ellen McCaffery
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About This Book

The text surveys traditional and esoteric meanings attached to colours, arguing that hues function as symbols and vibratory forces linked to emotion, music, and the natural world. It treats individual colours in turn—red, yellow, green, blue, purple, white, black, brown and grey—and considers the rainbow, tracing cultural lore, gem and talismanic uses, and artistic and poetic responses. Practical topics include medical and agricultural applications of coloured rays, meteorological colour signs, chromatics of the sky, and the proposed correspondence between colour and sound. Appendices outline schools of colour, planetary colours, and experiments on plant growth under coloured light.

M. Camille Flammarion has made many interesting experiments on the growth of plants under different coloured rays. In one experiment he took young lettuces from the same plot of ground, and all the same size. His results showed that—

Under red glass lettuce grows four times as quickly as in direct sunlight.
” green ”     ”     slightly quicker than in sunlight.
” blue ” becomes very stunted.

In another experiment he worked with Indian corn.

In sunlight one plant grew to 25 inches.
Under red glass ” ” ” 18 ”
” green ” ” ” 8 ”
” blue ” ” ” 6 ”
Beans flourished under white and red glass.
” perished ” green ” blue ”

From the above it seems that blue glass is bad for plants; but this is not always so, as is seen from the experiments of General Pleasanton, where he grew the best grapes in his district by using alternate white and blue glass in his greenhouses. Babbit states that blue light develops germination of plants, while red and yellow develop animalculæ. Yellow rays cause carbon to deposit from the air, and so form the woody fibre of plants. Red and yellow cause seeding and fruitage.

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