148 COLOUR VISION 



Rivers suggests that the insensitiveness to blue may be due to 

 greater macular pigmentation. The natives were able to recognise blue 

 readily on the peripheral retina. 



Rivers tested 50 natives of Upper Egypt with Holmgren's wools, 

 Nagel's cards, and Lovibond's tintometer. He found much confusion 

 in their colour names, but general agreement with the characteristics of 

 primitive colour nomenclature in other parts of the world. There was a 

 very definite word, ahmar, in use for red, but it was also applied to 

 colours containing a red element, such as orange, purple, violet and 

 brown. A somewhat less definite term, asfar, was employed for yellow, 

 also for orange and brown and occasionally for green and faint red. 

 The word for green, akhdar, was still less definite, being very often 

 applied to blue, violet, grey and brown. There was no definite 

 word for blue. The word azraq, usually regarded as the Arabic 

 equivalent of blue, was never used by these people for light blue, and 

 was applied by them more frequently to black than to an indigo blue. 

 The nearest approach to a word for blue was labdni, milk colour, which 

 was, however, often used also for green, grey, and brown. Azraq and 

 iswid (black) were used indiscriminately for black, blue, and violet, and 

 also for dark brown. The Arabic term for brown, asm.ar, was never 

 once used for this colour though occasionally applied to blue and grey. 

 Over twenty different names were used for brown papers and wools, 

 but generally ahmar or as far. 



Of 80 natives of Upper Egypt tested by Randall-Maclver and 

 Rivers four were certainly colour-blind (" red-green blind "), making 

 the characteristic mistakes with Holmgren's wools (see Part II). 

 Others made the same kind of matches as the Torres Straits' natives, 

 i.e., they behaved normally with the red, pink, and yellow test wools, 

 but compared green with blue, and blue with violet. Two distinct 

 tendencies were also noted, viz., to match according to saturation 

 rather than according to colour tone, and to put together wools which 

 would be called by them the same name. The colour thresholds for 

 red and yellow were low, that for blue much above the European 

 average. 



Amongst the Todas there was a definite word for red which also 

 meant blood. Orange was often called " blood " or " earth." Yellow 

 was called drsena. probably a borrowed word. Green had many 

 names ' leaf," " moss," including the Tamil name and nil, blue, 

 and Mg, dark or black. Blue and indigo were generally called nil, a 

 word used by all the Dravidian races of Southern India, but sometimes 



