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



blue by a man and three boys; and (2) the confusion of blue with 

 yellow by one man. The boys are ruled out by Rivers on the ground 

 of carelessness ; the men remain. Rivers, however, gives us the 

 clue to their behavior : " the yellow test wool used by me was a dull 

 yellow," and blue is also regarded by the natives as a dull color. If 

 the men muttered or thought akdsakds as they matched or compared 

 all is in order.*^ My observer 5(m.) gives the name "dull" to the 

 " shades" of YO, Y, GB and VB. 



I said just now that we are accustomed to classify colored objects 

 by their hue; the following experiment shows that we can classify 

 them, without trouble, by other means. I showed the 125 wools of 

 the standard Holmgren set to my colleagues Drs. Boring, Foster and 

 Weld, with the following request : " Arrange these wools into groups 

 of similars, on the basis of first impression. Do not set out to judge 

 by hue or tint or chroma; do not try to maintain any uniform basis 

 of judgment; group the wools simply by the first impression they 

 make upon you." I had recourse to highly experienced observers, 

 because I thought that they would be less biased in favor of hue 

 than undergraduate or graduate students ; I thought also that they 

 would be less afraid of making " foolish " matches. The result of 

 the test is that Boring distinguishes 9 groups, Foster 18, Weld 4. 

 Hue has a marked influence on choices : but Boring, who shows this 

 influence most strongly, still throws together R, O, P, V, and in 

 another group Y, G, BG, V ; Foster groups with the Holmgren test- 

 purple R, G, BG, B, P and V wools ; and Weld groups with the 

 same test wool R, O, Y, G, BG, P and V wools. This is a single 

 test, to be sure, and the same observers would probably have made 

 different groups had it been repeated. The fact remains, neverthe- 

 less, that if the prejudice in favor of hue is weakened or removed 

 an expert observer will find likenesses of color-impression at least 

 as wide-ranging as those of the Murray people. 



It has not seemed necessary to enter in detail upon other tests 

 than those conducted on Murray Island ; and it does not seem neces- 

 sary to discuss here the remaining tests of contrast, after-images, 

 etc. I find in them nothing to invalidate what has been said above. 



48 R, 50 f., 55 f. 



