The Colour-Sense

Abstract

WITH reference to Dr. Pole's valuable papers on Homer's colour-blindness, it may interest your readers to learn that I have now nearly completed a work on “The Origin and Development of the Colour-Sense”, which will be shortly published by Messrs. Trübner and Co. In it I have endeavoured to show (inter alia) that the use of colour-terms in the Homeric poems is strictly analogous to that of other races, existing or extinct, at the corresponding stage of culture; and that both depend, not upon dichromic vision, but upon a defect of language closely connected with the small number of dyes or artificial pigments known to the various tribes. To establish this result I have sent a number of circular letters to missionaries, Government officials, and other persons having relations with native uncivilised races in all parts of the world; and their answers to my queries, framed so as to distinguish carefully between perception and language, in every case bear out the theory which I had formed. As my results will so soon be published elsewhere, I shall not burden your columns with them at present, but may add that my researches lead me to place the origin of the colour-sense far lower down in the animal scale, as evidenced both by the distinctive hues of flowers and fruits, and by the varied integuments of insects, birds, &c, so far as these are the result of sexual selection, or of mimicry and other protective devices.