Marrone is a retiring colour easily compounded in all its hues and shades by the mixture variously of red, black, and brown, or of any other warm colours in which red and black predominate; but the following are the only pigments which bear the denomination :—

I. CHOCOLATE LEAD-Marrone Red, &c. Chocolate lead is a pigment prepared by calcining oxide of lead with about a third of that of copper, and reducing the compound to a uniform tint by levigation. It is of a chocolate hue, strong opaque body, and dries freely. Chromate of copper and chromate of quicksilver afford similar pigments, varying in brightness of colour; but all these, being of colours easily compounded, are not employed.

II. MARRONE LAKE is a preparation of madder of great depth, transparency, and durability of colour. It works well in water, glazes and dries in oil, and is in all respects a good pigment: as, however, its hues are easily given with other pigments, it has not been much used. There is a deeper kind, which has been called purple-black.

III. BURNT CARMINE [See p. 248]. Failures in the process of burning carmines, and preparing the purple of gold, frequently afford good marrone colours.

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IV. CARUCRU, or Chica, is a new pigment, of a soft powdery texture, and rich marrone colour, brought by Lieutenant Mawe from South America; for a portion of which we have been indebted to the kindness of Mr. Brockedon. It is said to be procured from a species of bignonia in the manner of indigo by the Indians of the interior of Guiana, and employed by their chiefs and higher orders as a fucus for the face, and as a sovereign remedy, topically applied, for the erysipelas.⁕ Comparatively as a pigment, it resembles marrone lake in colour, and is equal in body and transparency to the carmine of cochineal, though by no means approaching it in beauty, or even in durability, fugitive as the latter pigment is. Exposed to the light of a window, even without sun, the colour of carucru is soon changed and destroyed, which defects alone render it unfit for fine art, whatever value it may be found to possess in dyeing or in medicine.

In its chemical affinities it very much resembles the best anotta, although it is redder in colour; and, if we may venture an opinion, it is but a finer species of that drug, and may be substituted for it in tinging lackers and varnishes, as it forms a rich orange tincture with spirit of wine.

See an article on this production by Dr. Hancock, Edin. N. Phil. Journ. No. XIV.

Its use as a rouge evinces a good eye in the Carib, with whose complexion it is better suited to harmonize, than the gaudy rouge prepared from carthamus or safflower, very injudiciously employed by the fair beauties of Europe.

CHAPTER XX.

OF GRAY.

"Down sunk the sun, the closing hour of day
Came onward, mantled o'er with dusky gray."

Parnell.

Of the tribe of semi-neutral colours, Gray is the third and last, being nearest in relation of colour to black. In its common acceptation, and that in which we here use it, gray denotes a class of cool cinereous colours, faint of hue; whence we have blue grays, olive grays, green grays, purple grays, and grays of all hues, in which blue predominates; but no yellow or red grays, the predominance of such hues carrying the compounds into the classes of brown and marrone, of which gray is the natural opposite. In this sense the semi-neutral gray is distinguished from the neutral grey, which springs in an infinite series from the mixture of the neutral black and white:- between grays and grey, however, there is no intermediate, since where colour ends in the one, neutrality commences in the other, and vice versa; — hence the natural alliance of the semi-neutral gray with black or shade; an alliance which is strengthened by the

latent predominance of blue in the synthesis of black, so that in the tints resulting from the mixture of black and white, so much of that hue is developed as to give apparent colour to the tints. This affords the reason why the tints of black and dark pigments are colder than their originals, so much so as in some instances to answer the purposes of positive colours; and it accounts in some measure for the natural blueness of the sky, though this is partly dependent, by contrast, upon the warm colour of sunshine to which it is opposed; for, if by any accident the light of nature should be rendered red, the colour of the sky would not appear purple in consequence, but green; or if the sun shone green, the sky would not be green, but red inclined to purple; and so on of all colours, not according to the laws of composition in colours, but of contrast, since, if it were otherwise, the golden rays of the sun would render a blue sky green.

The grays are the natural cold correlatives, or contrasts, of the warm semi-neutral browns; and they are degradations of blue and its allies ;hence blue added to brown throws it into or toward the class of grays, and hence grays are equally abundant in nature and necessary in art; for the grays comprehend in nature and painting a widely diffused and beautiful play of retiring colours in skies, distances, carnations, and the shadowings and reflections of pure light, &c. Gray