Read the following passages and answer the questions that follow:
Colour is so much a part of our daily life
that it is difficult to imagine a world without it. We find it everywhere: in
the morning sunrise, at sunset, in the flowers of spring and summer, in the glorious
hues of autumn, in the rainbow, in the clothes we wear, the paints we use, etc.
It is interesting to note how colours affect
our feelings. Red, for instance, is a cheerful colour. You must often have felt
the comfort of the warm red glow of a fire on a winter evening. But red is also
a rousing colour which warms us or causes our feelings to run high. We talk of
“seeing red” when we are angry; a red flag shows danger ; a red rag angers a
bull; a red light warns us not to cross a street, and fire-engines are red like
the fire to which they are racing. Red is therefore a stirring colour, which is
not suitable for bed-rooms or places where we wish to relax and rest.
Yellow is cheerful, too. It is the colour of
sunshine, and of many different kinds of fruit and flowers. We like to think of
yellow as the colour connected with spring when new life begins to spring up
alter the winter’s cold.
Green is restful. People sometimes wear green
glasses to keep out the glare of the sun, and doctors have found that a
patient sleeps more easily in a room which has been painted pale green. Blue
is also restful, but it is a cold colour. We often speak of being ‘blue with
cold’; and when we are sad, we speak of having ‘a fit of the blues”. In a
rainbow we see seven clours— red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo and
violet. These colours are really waves of light ranging from long (red) to
short (violet), Besides the colours we can see, there are others which we
cannot see. They lie beyond the place where the colours, as we see them, begin
and end. At the red end lie infra-red rays and at the violet-end are
ultra-violet rays. ‘Ultra’ means beyond and ‘infra’ below.
The strange thing is that some animals cannot
distinguish any colours at all, while others see those colours which are beyond
our range of vision. Dogs for example, see no colours at all, but ants can see
ultra-violet rays and thoroughly dislike them.
How sad and dreary life would be without
colours. Truely, the sense of colour brings us some of the greatest joys in
life.
Q. 1. (a) What colour is wholly cheerful and
gay?
(b) What colour rouses our feelings?
(c) What colour is wholly restful?
(d) What colour is cold and saddening?
2. Name the colours of the rainbow in their
right order.
3, Which of the following titles do to regard
as (A) most suitable, (B) least suitable
(a) Facts about colour.
(b) The colour of the rainbow.
(c) How colours affect us.
(d) Unseen colours.
(e) The joys of colour.
4. Where do we find beautiful colours in
Nature?
5. How do human beings make use of colour
Name at least five examples.
6. Prove from the extract:
(a) that red rouses two kinds of feeling.
(b) that blue does not rouse only a single
feeling.
(c) that red is a bad colour for bed-room.
(d) that some animals cannot tell whether a
thing is red, green or any other colour.
(e) that there are some colours which human
being cannot see.
7. How do the following things affect most of
us when we see them?
(a) a fire (b) a pale-greenroom; (c) a red
flag;
(d) sunshine: (c) a pale-blue room.
8. Which two colours can human beings not see?
Explain how these two colours were named.
9. What strange fact do you know about ants?
10. We sometimes use the names of colours in
describing our feelings. What do we say:—
(a) When we are down-hearted?
(b) When we are furious?
