Brown,
the color produced when certain substances -- wood or paper, for example -- are scorched or partially burned. Brown is not one of the primary colors of the spectrum. It is composed of red and yellow, with black, the negation of color. It is also the name of a genus of colors, of which the typical species is ordinary brown, tinged with grayish or blackish. The other species are chestnut brown, deep brown, bright brown, rusty, cinnamon, red brown, rufous, glandaceous, liver colored, sooty, and lurid.
Entry from Everybody's Cyclopedia, 1912.