226 ^Journal of Comparative Neurology and Psychology. 



not, however, show itself, and, furthermore, the only mistake that 

 I noticed, with regard to black, was that he at times took it for 

 dark green, whereas still darker blues, violets and reds were 

 present. 



Had the sensation which resulted from a too weak saturation of 

 the blue been the cause of the curious reaction to blue, then at 

 least a confusion would have occasionally occurred between blue 

 and gray; this was, however, not the case, although at least three 

 different brightnesses of blue and the same number of gray were 

 shown together. I can, therefore, merely say that the child's 

 disinclination for blue remains for me quite inexplicable. 



I have still to mention that in the second week of the tests, my 

 son introduced, on his own account, a procedure into the experi- 

 mentation that it had not at first occurred to me to employ. He 

 reacted, namely, to questions like, "where is red.?" or, "where is 

 blue?" more and more frequently with answers such as, "that is 

 not red" (pointing to blue or green), or (pointing to green), "now 

 this is green." He designated in this way a large number of the 

 colored papers ahvays by omitting the color-term about which I 

 had questioned him. He clearly favored, in these responses, the 

 greens, violets and reds, for which he had all along shown an 

 especial fondness. 



From the twelfth day on, I could scarcely induce the child, at 

 my behest, to point to three or four varieties of a certain color. 

 He indicated either only one example of the tone I wished, or none 

 at all, picking out, however, with the utmost willingness, all 

 sorts of colors which he knew and could name, with the exception 

 of blue, which he never chose. The first method of investigation 

 was becoming tiresome to him, and I soon felt that an attempt to 

 carry through systematically the earlier procedure could end in 

 nothing but aversion and inattention. 



From such experiments as I have here reported one may con- 

 clude, if one adopts the same procedure, that a clear answer is 

 hardly to be had to the question which colors the child can dis- 

 criminate, but that the various interests or the different prefer- 

 ences of the child for the single colors influence his reactions. 

 The solution of the chief problem, the ability of the child to dis- 

 tinguish colors, is thereby made more difficult, and the more so 

 the longer the experiments are continued. During the two weeks 

 of my investigation, I could plainly see that my son generally 



