COLOR-VISION AND COLOR-BLINDNESS. 699 



by the complaints of their drivers ; aiul none but railway ofticials know 

 how raauy cases of over-running signals, followed by disi)utes as to 

 what the signals actually were, occur in the course of a year's work. I 

 have never heard of an instance in this country, in which, after a rail- 

 way accident, the color vision of the driver concerned or of his fireman 

 has been tested by an expert on the part either of the board of trade or 

 of the company, but a fireman in the United States has recently recov- 

 ered heavy damages from the company for the loss of one of his legs 

 in a collision which was proved to have been occasioned by the color- 

 blindness of the driver. Looking at the whole question, I feel that the 

 danger on railways is a real one, but that it is minimized by the several 

 considerations to which I have referred, and that It is much smaller 

 than the frequency of the defect might lead us to think likely. 



At sea, the danger is much more formidable. The lights appear at 

 all sorts of times and places, and there may be only one responsible 

 person on the lookout. Mr. Bickerton, of Liverpool, has lately pub- 

 lished accounts of three cases in which the color-blindness of officers of 

 the mercantile marine, all of whom had passed the board of trade ex- 

 amination, was accidentally discovered by the captain being on deck 

 when the officers in question gave wrong orders conseiiuent upon mis- 

 taking the light shown by an approaching vessel. The loss of the Ville 

 du Havre was almost certainly due to color-blindness ; and a very fatal 

 collision in American waters, some years ago, between the Isaac Bell 

 and the Lumberman, was traced, long after the event, to the color- 

 blindness of a pilot, who had been unjustly accused of being drunk at 

 the time of the occurrence. In how manj' instances color-blindness 

 has been the unsuspected cause of wrecks and other calamities at sea, 

 it is impossible to do more than conjecture. 



It is necessary then, alike in the public interest and in the interest 

 of the color-blind, who have doubtless often suffered in the misfortunes 

 which their defects have produced, to detect them in time to prevent 

 them from entering into the marine and railway services ; and the next 

 question is, how this detection should be accomplished. We have to 

 distinguish the color-blind from the color-sighted ; but we must be care- 

 ful not to confound color-blindness with the much more common con- 

 dition of color-ignorance. 



It would surprise many people, more especially many ladies, to dis- 

 cover the extent to which sheer ignorance of color prevails among boys 

 and men of the laboring classes. Many who can see colors perfectly, 

 and who would never be in the least danger of mistaking a railway 

 signal, are quite unable to name colors or to describe tliem, and they are 

 sometimes unable to perceive for want of education of a faculty which 

 they notwithstanding possess, anything like fine shades of difference. 

 Mr. Gladstone once published a paper on the scanty and uncertain 

 color-nomenclature of the Homeric poems, and he might have found 

 very similar examples among his own contemporaries and in his own 



