Blue is one of the seven colours into which the rays of light divide themselves when refracted through a glassprism, seen in nature in the clear expanse of the heavens; the term is also applied to a dye or pigment of this hue.
The substances used as blue pigments are of very different natures, and derived from various sources; they are all compound bodies, some being natural and others artificial. They are derived almost entirely from the vegetable and mineral kingdoms. The principal blues used in painting are ultramarine, which was originally prepared from lapis-lazuli or azure-stone - a mineral found in China and other oriental countries - but, as now prepared, it is an artificial compound of china-clay, carbonate of soda, sulphur, and charcoal; Prussian or Berlin blue, which is a compound of cyanogen and iron; blue bice, prepared from carbonate of copper; indigo blue, from the indigo plant. Besides these, there are numerous other blues used in art, as blue-verditer, smalt- and cobalt-blue, from cobalt, lacmus or litmus, etc.
Before the discovery of aniline or coal-tar colours dyers chiefly depended for their blues on woad, archil, indigo, and Prussian blue, but now a series of brilliant blues are obtained from coal-tar, possessing great tinctorial power and various degrees of durability.
Blue as a colour ranges from green-blue (turquoise) through to purple-blue (indigo).
Alice blue - A very light greenish-blue colour.
Aquamarine - A bluish-green colour.
Azure - A deep blue colour reminiscent of the sky.
Aquamarine - A pale greenish-blue colour.
Bice blue - A medium blue colour
Cambridge blue - A light blue colour.
Cobalt blue - A deep blue colour with a greenish-tint. The colour of old blue glass.
Hieroglyphics (so called from the Greek hieros, sacred, and glypho, I engrave), is a term originally applied to the inscriptions sculptured on buildings in Egypt, in the belief that the writing was confined to sacred subjects, and legible only to the priests. The term has also been applied to picture-writing in general, such as that of the Mexicans and the still ruder pictures of the North American Indians.
Three different modes of writing were used by the ancient Egyptians, the Hieroglyphic, the Hieratic, and the Demotic. Pure hieroglyphic writing is the earliest, and consists of figures of material objects from every sphere of nature and art, with certain mathematical and arbitrary symbols. Next was developed the hieratic or priestly writing, the form in which most Egyptian literature is written, and in which the symbols almost cease to be recognizable as figures of objects. Hieratic writings of the third millennium BC are extant. In the demotic or enchorial writing, derived directly from the hieratic, the symbols are still more obscured. The demotic was first used in the 9th century BC, and was chiefly employed in social and commercial intercourse.
Down to the end of the 18th century scholars failed to find a clue to the hieroglyphic writings. In 1799, however, Bouchard, a French captain of engineers, discovered at Rosetta the celebrated stone which afforded European scholars a key to the language and writing of the ancient Egyptians. It contained a trilingual inscription in hieroglyphics, demotic characters, and Greek, which turned out
to be a decree of the priests in honour of Ptolemy V, issued in 195 BC. The last paragraph of the Greek inscription stated that two translations, one in the sacred and the other in the popular Egyptian language, would be found adjacent to it.
The discovery of an alphabet was the first task. The demotic part of the inscription was first examined by De Sacy and Akerblad, and the signification of a number of the symbols ascertained. The hieroglyphic part was next carefully examined and compared with the demotic and Greek. At last after much study Champollion and Dr. Thomas Young, independently of each other, discovered the method of reading the characters in 1822, and thus provided a clue to the decipherment of the ancient Egyptian writing.
Hieroglyphic characters are either ideographic, i.e. using well-known objects as symbols of conceptions, or phonetic, i.e. representing words by symbols standing for their sounds. The phonetic signs are again divided into alphabetical signs and syllabic signs. Many of the ideographic characters are simple enough; thus the figure of a man, a woman, a calf, indicate simply those objects. Others, however, are less simple, and convey their meaning figuratively or symbolically.
Water was expressed by three zigzag lines, one above the other, to represent waves or ripples of running water, milk by a milk-jar, oil by an oil-jar, fishing by a pelicanseizing a fish, i.e. fishing; seeing and sight by an eye; and so on.
The nature of the phonetic hieroglyphs, which represent simply sounds are more diffuclt to explain. Characters represent sounds, thus a picture of a knee represents a K sound. A lioncouchant represents the L sound. A reed represents the E sound The reed is doubled to represents the diphthong 'ai'. A noose represents the O sound. A mat represents the P sound. An eagle represents the A sound. The hand represents the T sound. A semicircle is found at the end of feminine proper names, and is the Coptic feminine article T.
The researches of Champollion satisfied him of the existence of homophones, or characters having the same phonetic value and which might be interchanged in writing proper names. The mouth, represents the R sound. The egg is found at the end of proper names of women, and is a feminine affix. The hook represents the S sound Vowels were only regarded by the Egyptians as they were needed to avoid ambiguous writing.
There are groups of hieroglyphs of which one element is an ideographic sign, to which a phonetic complement is added to indicate the pronunciation of the ideographic sign. The words of a text could be written in hieroglyphs in three ways: 1. By phonetic hieroglyphs, 2. By ideographic hieroglyphs; and 3, by a combination of both. According to Ebers, in the perfected system of hieroglyphics the symbols for sounds and syllables are to be regarded as the foundation of the writing, while symbols for ideas are interspersed with them, partly to render the meaning more intelligible, and partly for ornamental purposes, or with a view to keep up the mystic character of the hieroglyphics. Research Hieroglyphics
Tempera is a mode or process of painting, the term especially being applied to early Italian painting, in which egg and glue were used to bind the colours. Research Tempera
Alternate generation or metagenesis is that kind of multiplication, seen in some invertebrate animals or even in plants, in which parents produce progeny unlike, sometimes extremely unlike, themselves, while this unlike progeny give rise to others resembling the original forms. Sometimes there are more than one unlike form between these like forms. The Hydrozoa abundantly illustrate this phenomenon, also the Echinoderms, Polyzoa, Tunicata, the wheel animalcules, Nematoid worms, flat-worms, tape-worms, several of the true Annelids; among Crustaceans, Daphnia, the Phyllopods; among Insects, the plant-lice.
The steps may be seen in certain of the Hydroid Polyps, thus: (1) There is an ovum or egg, free-swimming and impregnated. (2) This ovum attaches itself to a fixed submarine object, and develops into an organized animal. (3) This organism produces buds or zooids, often of two kinds - one set nutritive, the other generative - unlike each other and unlike their parent, the whole forming a hydroid colony. (4) The generative set mature eggs, which on being liberated become the free-swimming ova (No. 1), and the cycle is renewed. A somewhat similar phenomenon is that of parthenogenesis. Research Alternate Generation
Ametabola are a division of insects which are wingless and do not undergo any metamorphosis, but which hatch from the egg nearly in the same form they keep throughout their life. This includes the lice and spring-tails. Research Ametabola
The Anchovy-Pear (Grias cauliflora) is a tree of the natural order Myrtaceae, a native of Jamaica, growing to the height of fifteen meters, with large leaves and large white flowers, and bearing a fruit somewhat bigger than a hen's egg, which is pickled and eaten like the mango, which it strongly resembles in taste. Research Anchovy-Pear
The Araucana is an old Chilean breed of hardy chicken domesticated by the Arauca Indians of Chile. The Araucana is bred both with and without a tail and with ear tufts but is most remarkable for laying eggs of varying colours, which has given rise to it being nicknamed the Easter Egg Layer. Research Araucana
The Ardenner is the oldest Belgian breed of chicken. The Ardenner is a hardy breed, slender and elegant in shape and very active needing plenty of space to run about, originally bred for its egg laying abilities - 170 eggs laid in one year being recorded. Research Ardenner
The Assendelfter or Assendelft Fowl is a Dutch breed of chicken originating from northern Holland. The Assendelfter is a slender bird bred for egg laying, producing smallish eggs are rarely going broody. Research Assendelfter
The Probert Encyclopaedia was designed, edited and programed by
Matt and Leela Probert
Abbreviations
Research Hieroglyphics
