372 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



comes much later than the perception.* These investigations of Gar- 

 bini are very significant, and there can be little doubt that the evolution 

 of the child's color sense repeats that of the race. 



In dealing with the color perceptions of savages and children we 

 are, of course, to some extent dealing more or less unconsciously with 

 their color preferences. There is some interest from our present point 

 of view in considering the conscious color preferences of young and 

 adult civilized persons. Eed, as we have seen, is the color that fascinates 

 our attention earliest, that we see and recognize most vividly; it remains 

 the color that attracts our attention most readily and that gives us the 

 greatest emotional shock. It by no means necessarily follows that it is 

 the most pleasurable color. As a matter of fact, such evidence as is 

 available shows that very often it is not. There seems reason to think 

 that after the first early perception of red, and early pleasure in it, 

 yellow or orange is frequently the favorite color, the preference often 

 lasting during several years of childhood; Preyer's child liked and dis- 

 criminated yellow best, and Miss Shinn was inclined to think that it 

 was the favorite color of her niece, who in the twenty-eighth month 

 showed a special fondness for daffodils and for a yellow dress. Barnes 

 found that in children the love of yellow diminishes with age. Binef s 

 child was specially preoccupied with orange. Aars in an elaborate and 

 frequently varied investigation into the color preferences of eight chil- 

 dren (four of each sex), between four and seven years of age, found 

 that with the boys the order of preference was blue and yellow (both 

 equal), then red, lastly green; while with the girls the order was green, 

 blue, red and yellow; in combinations of two colors it was found that 

 combinations of blue come first, then of yellow, then green, lastly red. 

 It was found (as J. Cohn has found among adults and cultivated 

 people) that the deepest and most saturated color was most pleasing; 

 and also that the love of novelty and of variety was an important 

 factor. It will be observed that at this age green was the girls' 

 favorite color and that least liked by the boys, whose favorite color, in 

 combination, was blue; the number of individuals was, however, small. 

 This was in Germany. In America, among 1,000 children, probably 

 somewhat older on the average (though I have not details of the in- 

 quiry), Mr. Earl Barnes found, like Dr. Aars, that more boys than girls 

 selected blue, while the girls preferred red more frequently than the 

 boys; Barnes considers that with growing years there is a growing 

 tendency to select red; as is well known, girls are more precocious than 

 boys. Among 100 students at Columbia University, the order of prefer- 

 ence was found to be blue (34 per cent), red (22.7 per cent), and then 

 at a more considerable distance violet, yellow, green. It is noteworthy 



*Garbini, "Evoluzione del senso cromatico nella infanzia," Arckivio per V Anbropoloffia, 

 1894. T. 



