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



We cannot hope, of course, to invert this experiment; we cannot 

 expect, if we ask for names of R, Y, G and B objects, to find a 

 greater scattering in the B-list than in the others. For blue flowers, 

 bhie articles of dress, blue hangings and blue china and other house- 

 hold gear are common enough ; and experiment shows that blue sky 

 and green grass are more often associated than are red and yellow 

 to any object of their color.*^ We live in a world where blue has its 

 acknowledged place. The Murray Islander does not. Blood he 

 knows, and red and yellow ochre, and turmeric, and the brilliant 

 deep-green gall-bladder of the turtle — all of them objects of the 

 highest importance in the conduct of his life ; but blue he has no 

 dealings with. " Every detail of the behavior of the natives in 

 connection with the naming of color was consistent with the idea," 

 Rivers says, " that blue was to them a darker or a duller color than it 

 is to us."^' I submit that their behavior is equally consistent with 

 the idea that blue did not interest them. 



Not much need be said of Rivers' work on the matching of 

 wools. " The natives," we are told, " understood what they were 

 required to do very readily in most cases. "^^ Rivers does not him- 

 self inform us what this requirement was; but it was evidently the 

 matching of wools for hue (color tone). The lack of any explicit 

 statement to this effect is, I think, significant. We are so accus- 

 tomed to classify colored objects by their hue, their "color" proper, 

 that the classification seems to us to be natural and normal. The 

 Murray Islander, however, appears to classify by total impression ; 

 the wools appeal to him by their combined hue, tint and chroma ; and 



*- 1 asked the 19 students who happened to be in my laboratory at the 

 time (8 women and 11 men) to write down the names of the first five R, Y, 

 G and B objects that occurred to them. The order was varied, so that any 

 practice-effect might be roughly compensated. Green grass came 17 times, 

 blue sky 15 times, and red blood only 8 times, out of the possible 19. The 

 B objects fell into the same rough groups as the others (person, personal 

 adornment; clothing; articles of personal use; — house, household furniture; 

 — vegetation, flowers, fruit; beasts, birds, insects; — landscape and seascape). 



4^ R, 94. I am glad to find myself, on this point, in substantial accord 

 with R. S. Woodworth ("The Puzzle of Color Vocabularies," Psych. Bull., 

 VII., 1910, 329 ff.). 



44 R, 49. 



