if our soldiers had manifested any
disposition to yield.

[E] The writer's father saw these skulls hanging in the cars on a
railway in Georgia, after first Bull Run, and saw them handed through
the cars amid the jeers of passengers.

COLORS AND THEIR MEANING.

In order to a due understanding of the signification of colors, it is
necessary we should commence at the foundation. Accordingly I shall
begin by saying that colors are primary, secondary, and tertiary.

Primary colors are three: red, yellow, and blue.

RED is the color of greatest heat.

YELLOW is the color of greatest light.

BLUE is the color of chemical change.

In accordance with this philosophical truth, we should naturally expect
to find a preponderance of blue rays from the sun in the spring time,
and so it is.

These rays preponderate at the time of ploughing, sowing, and
germination.

In the summer time, after the plant has started from the ground, and
requires vigorous leaves to bring it to perfection ere the cold winter
rolls around once more, we have the yellow rays. 'Light, more light,' is
then the cry of nature, and as not even length of days affords this
element in sufficient completeness, the sun darts his brightest beams in
'the leafy month of June.'

Later still in the year, after germination is past and growth perfected,
comes the necessity of heat rays to ripen fruit, vegetables, and grain,
and nature's behests are obeyed in the then preponderance of the red
rays. Much of this effect may be due to the _media_ through which the
sun's rays pass. A sensitized photographic paper is not colored as much
at an altitude of three miles in half an hour as is a similar paper upon
the earth's surface in one moment. At any season of the year, gardeners
can either stimulate or retard germination as they place a blue or
yellow glass over the nursling. That the growth of plants is not due
alone to the rays of the sun we can, without experiment, convince
ourselves, as even ordinary observers are well aware that upon some days
plants shoot up so rapidly as to grow almost visibly under their eyes,
and in other conditions of the atmosphere seemingly remain dormant for
days.

The germinating influence, let it be due either to peculiar rays alone,
or to atmospheric state, does not contain much coloring matter. The
first spring flowers are of a pale color; as summer advances we have
brighter hues, but not until the approach of fall do we see