I moved the cursor and the color range, at the bottom, changed to a gradient scale from black to white through bluse only. There are no other colors available. I am using a T60 Lenovo ThinkPad, running Ubuntu 12.04. Using Synaptic, I did a complete removal, followed by reinstall to no avail. the issue did not resolve itself.

Dose anyone know how to return the scale to it's original selection of color?

Hi.

You probably changed your palette to "blues".
Right next to the palette's line there is a small arrow icon, if you click on it, you can change it to the basic "inkscape default" one.
Maybe by ununstalling you didn't clear some settings referring to that.

By the way you can create your own palettes too.
Ragnar made a tutorial on creating colour palettes by hand,
a variety of palettes and a nice
swap palette colors extension too.

Good luck!