Nature's Colors

The Beauty Spot on the Wing of a Mallard Drake

Mallard Drake Wing (Courtesy of U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service)

We recently treated ourselves to a copy of the book, Werner’s Nomenclature of Colours - Adapted to Zoology, Botany, Chemistry, Mineralogy, Anatomy, and the Arts by P. Syme. This is a pocket-size facsimile printing of the second edition book originally published in 1821. The author, Patrick Syme, was an Edinburgh “flower-painter” to the Wernerian and Caledonian Horticultural Societies. The original edition, published in 1814, was compiled by Abraham Gottlob Werner, a mineralogist and geologist and was written to help identify minerals by various characteristics, including color. In the time before photography, descriptive details recorded by scientists were made solely by the written word. Colors had to be described in precise non-ambiguous words.

Syme expanded the original edition by adding color charts to the descriptions, making the book a great value to a much broader spectrum of scientists and artists. T…