Howard, Frank: Colour, as a means of art: being an adaptation of the experience of professors to the practice of amateurs (London, 1838)

78 PRINCIPLES OF

coloured distance, and aerial tints similar to those
produced by the scumble are obtained.

However requisite it may be philosophically to
account for these appearances, it is unnecessary to
perplex the reader of the present work, with a
questionable statement of the greater impetus of
rays of certain colours enabling them to penetrate
through the dense atmosphere, while others are
more feeble, and are swallowed up and absorbed
by the medium through which they in vain
essay to pass. This may be a very pretty story
to amuse children with, and such philosophers
as are verging on their second childhood: but
while so simple a method can be discovered of
accounting for the blueness of the sky and
distant objects, and one that can be so easily
exemplified as that given in the previous pages,
we shall not be the parties to contribute to that
amusement, by writing "the history of some
blue rays that were lost in a fog." Nor is this
the place to point out the absurdity of such
theories: it will be sufficient to remark that
if they are correct, all distant objects must
appear red; and the blueness of the sky can
only be accounted for, by the hypothesis that
the atmosphere is a sort of trap for the blue