Abstract
INSTANCES of two phenomena recently noticed in NATURE have chanced to come under my observation, and in each case impressed me much with their beauty and distiuctuess; the first, an effect of contrast of colour on the surface of clear water. Standing looking up stream on a bridge over the Ary, where it flows through meadows close to Inverary Castle, and admiring the transparent brown hue so often seen so the peat-stained waters of Scotch streams, my attention was attracted by a series of wavelets forming a ridge, somewhat spiral in appearance, across the stream, along the top of a low weir over which the water falls. Every single wave presented on its further surface (that seen foreshortened by the spectator) a nearly level space of pure full-toned amethyst colour, while its advancing front showed with crystalline transparency the deep “cairn-gorm” or burnt sienna tint proper to the water. The regular alternation of these patches of rich and brilliantly-contrasted colours, together with their permanency and apparent independence of anything peculiar in the state of the atmosphere, produced a striking and very beautiful effect.
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H., I. Complementary Colours —A Mock Sunset. Nature 27, 78 (1882). https://doi.org/10.1038/027078c0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/027078c0
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