PRIMITIVE COLOR VISION. 49 



for the colors of horses,* though they tend to confuse the designations 

 for green and blue. 



I have had an opportunity of examining the color vision of the 

 Eskimos who have lately been in London, and have found that their 

 language presents a very striking contrast to that of the tropical people, 

 to whom my previous work had been limited. The terminology for 

 color appears to be extremely well developed; there are definite names 

 for red, yellow, green and blue, and modifications of these colors are 

 expressed by means of sufi&xes or by compounding two names; thus, by 

 more than one individual a purple was called 'aupaluktaktungalangai- 

 juk,' t which means bluish-red, while a violet was called 'tungajuktaka- 

 upalangaijuk,' which means reddish-blue. This recognition of the fact 

 that violet and purple are mixtures of red and blue shows a high degree 

 of definiteness in the nomenclature of both colors. I have only met 

 with one other individual who behaved in a similar way, viz., a Tamil, 

 who called purple 'sikapu-nilam,' red-blue. 



Another peculiarity which appears to characterize a very large num- 

 ber of languages is the absence of a word for brown. In Torres Strait 

 a native would call one brown by a name meaning 'reddish'; another 

 brown by the same name as yellow, while others would be called dark or 

 gray. It was quite clear that they had no generic name for brown. In 

 the Australian and Melanesian languages, I have had the opportunity of 

 studying, as well as in Tamil, Singhalese and Eskimo, I have failed to 

 find any definite term for brown, and the same defect is found in 

 Welsh and in many other languages. The word given for brown in 

 many vocabularies is obviously the same word as that used for red or 

 dark or gray. There is always a danger that one may accept, as a 

 generic name for brown, a word which is only a name for a special 

 brown. This was very well shown in Mabuiag, where brown wools were 

 by some natives called by such names as 'wamauwibadgamulnga' (honey- 

 comb colored), or Vabadgamulnga (Dracsena colored), but it was quite 

 certain that these were names used by certain individuals for special 

 browns and were in no sense names for brown in general. Similarly, 

 in other languages in which there is no word for brown there may be 

 names for special browns, such as names for the colors of horses or 

 cattle, but such terms are limited to those objects. We have in our 

 own language similar examples in the words 'bay' and 'dun.' 



The idea of brown is so definite with us that it is surprising that a 

 word for brown, and apparently the generic idea of brown, should be 



* Strictly speaking, these names and those of the Kaffirs are not names of 

 colors, but rather names for distribution of color and marking; thus among the 

 Kirghises a brown horse with a black mane and tail would have one name, and 

 a brown horse with a white mane and tail, another name. 



t 'Au' stands for the sound of 'ou' in 'house,' and 'ai' for that of 'i' in 'ice.' 



vol.. i-ix. — 1 



