E. B. TITCHENER— ETHNOLOGICAL TESTS OF SENSATION. 231 



Let us now see what can be urged on behalf of the blue-vision of 

 the islanders. 



1. Within the period of a generation, "the great majority" of 

 the Murray Islanders have learned to use the modified English word 

 bulubulu for blue colors. In the tintometer experiments, " owing 

 to the fact that biilnbuin had become the general term for blue, there 

 was no indefiniteness in the naming of this color " ; and in the work 

 on contrast the subjects " were all in the habit of calling blue bulubulu 

 when talking to me.""'^ This ready adoption of a foreign term seems 

 to indicate that the natives could distinguish blues when onc.e their 

 interest and attention had been directed toward them. 



2. In testing Europeans with the tintometer, Rivers found that 

 oftentimes "the subjective contrast color was seen when the objec- 

 tive color failed to be recognized." On Murray Island this phenom- 

 enon was rare. " In many hundred observations, a color was only 

 stated to be on the wrong side 15 times. No less than 6 of these 

 occurred with a B glass when the opposite aperture was called bam- 

 baiii [turmeric] ; in one case the opposite aperture was called R. 

 The aperture opposite the R glass was called bulubulu 4 times and 

 giacgiac [newborn child, light] once; opposite a Y glass, B was seen 

 twice and R once. Some of these were no doubt accidental, but it 

 is interesting that the instance which occurred most often was when 

 the objective color was B, to which they seemed so insensitive."^" 

 It is equally interesting that the Y glass gives a B contrast twice out 

 of three times; and the contrast-R may be justified for a greenish 

 yellow glass shown in poor illumination. Moreover, the R glass was 

 a carmine, and the complementary of carmine is BG. The report of 

 bulubulu four times out of five (though giasgias: is itself an occa- 

 sional word for blue) does not look like insensitivity. 



3. In the test of negative after-images " R was most readily seen 

 and B was doubtful. "^^ But the stimuli were zigzags of colored 



«R, vi.,2, 66, 7i,8of. 



^° R. 81. The anomalous reds (if both are anomalous) may be com- 

 pared with the anomalous light violet or purple (for me the color is definitely 

 a purple) which workers in my laboratory have found even under achromatic 

 adaptation; see L. M. Day, "The Effect of Illumination on Peripheral 

 Vision," Amcr. Journ. Psych., XXIII., 1912, 573 ; and cf. the anomalous 

 peripheral pinks or purples of R, 78. 



^1 R, 82. 



