E. B. TITCHENER— ETHNOLOGICAL TESTS OF SENSATION. 221 



might have been thoroughly tested, are characterized only in round 

 terms. The instrument employed may have been the best available ; 

 it embodies a vast deal of patient labor ; but it has not made its way 

 into our laboratories, and it has not (so far as I know) received a 

 thorough trial in any laboratory. We have no proof that it is ade- 

 quate to a comparative testing of color vision. 



I pass to the vexed question of color nomenclature. On Alurray 

 Island " there was great definiteness and unanimity in the nomen- 

 clature for red, rather less so for orange and yellow, less so for green, 

 and very great indefiniteness for blue and violet."-'^ " In Murray 

 Island there is no proper native term used for blue. Some of the 

 natives, especially the older men, use golegole, which means black 

 [cuttle fish], but the great majority use a term {hiihihubi] borrowed 

 from English and modified so as to resemble the other members of 

 their color vocabulary [the color names are formed by reduplication 

 from the names of various natural objects]. Another word, susert- 

 sitseri [rainbow], is used occasionally for blue and also for green, 

 and in the absence of the borrowed word this might have been used 

 more often. "-^ 



The absence of a word for blue, if the fact stood alone, is no 

 argument against sensitivity to blue. For the savage names only 

 what interests him, and we have seen that his interest is directed 

 upon the interpretation of sensory stimuli. But there is in Murray 

 Island no such sensory stimulus, no object of daily use or interest — 

 no pigment, for instance — of a blue color. I think that Rivers 

 would not dispute this position, if the fact stood alone. It is only 

 because of other facts, and because the character and distribution 

 of the other color-terms in the vocabulary arouse suspicion, that 

 he would argue — always tentatively — from " defective color lan- 

 guage '' to " defective color sense." We must therefore get a con- 

 spectus of the vocabulary at large. 



I have arranged the data for Murray Island in the form ot a 

 table.-'' Above stand the names of the objects from which the color 



" R, 54 f . 



28 R, 66 f . 



29 From R, 53 ff. 



