[XLVII.]
COMMUNICATION, APPARENT.
The communication of colours, real as well as apparent, corresponds, as may easily be seen, with their intermixture: we need not, therefore, repeat what has been already sufficiently entered into.
Yet we may here point out more circumstantially the importance of an apparent communication which takes place by means of reflection. This phenomenon is well known, but still it is pregnant with inferences, and is of the greatest importance both to the investigator of nature and to the painter.
Let a surface coloured with any one of the positive colours be placed in the sun, and let its reflection be thrown on other colourless objects. This reflection is a kind of subdued light, a half-light, a half-shadow, which, in a subdued state, reflects the colours in question.