THE COLOUR VISION OF PRIMITIVE RACES 147 



By far the most important contributions on the subject are those 

 of Rivers 1 . 



In the Torres Straits expedition Rivers examined the colour vision 

 of two tribes of Papuans, of natives of the island of Kiwai, and of 

 members of several Australian tribes. The languages of these people 

 showed different stages in the evolution of colour terminology, which 

 correspond in a striking manner with the course of evolution derived 

 from ancient writings by Geiger. Some Australian natives from the 

 district of Seven Rivers used only three colour epithets ; one for red, 

 purple, and orange ; another for white, yellow and green ; and a third 

 for black, blue, indigo and violet. In Kiwai there was a very definite 

 name for red, and a less definite for yellow ; greens were called by the 

 same names as white and black or light and dark ; blue, violet, and 

 black had the same name ; other Kiwaians had a name for green which 

 was also applied to blue and violet. The natives of Murray Island and 

 of the Island of Mabuiag showed two further stages in the evolution of 

 colour language. 



In these four stages the lowest possesses only a definite term for 

 red apart from white and black. In the next stage there are definite 

 terms for red and yellow, and an indefinite term for green. In the third 

 stage there are definite terms for red, yellow, and green, and a term for 

 blue has been borrowed from another language ; while in the highest 

 stage there are terms for both green and blue, but these tend to be 

 confused with one another. The series corresponds with the order of 

 the natives in general intellectual and cultural development. 



The absence of a definite term for blue is very common. In some 

 the word for blue and black is the same, e.g., Kiwaians, Hovas, Bushmen, 

 and many Australian and Melanesian tribes. In many others the word 

 for blue and green is the same, e.g., in African and South American races 

 and in Jamaica. The absence of a term for brown is also common in 

 Australian and Melanesian languages, as well as in Tamil, Singhalese, 

 Eskimo, Welsh, etc., a brown object being called red, yellow, or dark. 



Rivers tested 150 natives of Murray Island with Holmgren's wools 

 and failed to find any who confused red and green, but blue and green 

 and blue and violet were constantly confused. Examination with 

 Lovibond's tintometer showed a relatively greater sensibility to red and 

 less to blue than in the European. 



1 Pop. Sci. Mo. LIX. 44, 1901 ; Jl. of the. Anthropological Ins. xxxi. 229, 1901 ; Rep. of 

 the Cambridge Expedition to Torre* Strait*, II. 1, 1901 ; "Observations on the Senses of the 

 Todas," Brit. Jl. of Psychol. I. 321, 1905; The Todas of the Nilgiri Hills, Cambridge, 1906. 



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