54 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



The other consideration, to which, in my opinion, sufficient atten- 

 tion has not been paid, is whether the various colors are used appro- 

 priately. To prove the existence of a well-developed color sense from 

 monuments, it is not enough to show that certain colors were used; 

 it must be shown that they were used appropriately. Even in the 

 case of Egyptian art, one reads of statues of human figures with blue 

 hair, and in the case of early Greek art, the inappropriate use of one 

 color, blue appears to have been very common. 



I am informed by Mr. E. E. Sikes, to whom I am glad of this 

 opportunity of expressing my thanks for much kind advice, that in 

 the Acropolis at Athens, such examples of coloration are to be seen as 

 a blue bull, a blue horse, a man with blue hair, beard and mustache, 

 these probably dating from 600 B. C, certainly later than the time of 

 Homer.* When such examples of eccentric coloration in blue are found 

 associated with the defect in nomenclature for the same color, it is 

 difficult to believe that the sense for this color can have been as highly 

 developed in those times as it is among civilized races at the present 

 day. The whole subject of the use of color in ancient monuments, in its 

 bearing on color vision, requires a more thorough investigation than it 

 has hitherto received. 



Another line of objection to the views of Gladstone and Geiger, 

 which has already been mentioned as having been taken up by Grant 

 Allen, is derived from the high degree of development of the color 

 sense in many of the lower animals, and especially in insects and birds. 

 To many of those who have taken part in the controversy, this ob- 

 jection appears to have been regarded as conclusive. A well-developed 

 color sense in any one branch of the animal kingdom does not, how- 

 ever, necessarily imply the existence of the same in other, even if higher, 

 forms. We have many instances of the independent development of 

 closely similar mechanisms in very widely separated branches of the 

 animal kingdom, and there is nothing improbable in the view that this 

 may have been so in the case of the color sense. If the color sense were 

 found to be highly developed in mammals, the fact would naturally have 

 a closer bearing on the color sense of man than has the presence of a 

 similar development in birds. The evidence, however, of such develop- 

 ment in mammals is very defective. Graber,t who has carried out the 

 most comprehensive investigations of the color sense in different 

 branches of the animal kingdom, obtained much less definite evidence 

 from mammals than from other animals, and altogether failed to obtain 

 evidence in the case of some species. Again, if the anthropoid apes 

 were found to have a well-developed color sense, the fact would have 



* See also Gardner, 'Handbook of Greek Sculpture,' p. 28. 



f 'Grundlinien zur Erforsehung des Helligkeits ixnd Farbensinnes der Tiere.' 

 Prag., 1884. 



