Nagel, Color-Sense of a Child. 227 



spoke of that particular color which he had last learned. Only 

 in the case of blue was this not true. Toward the end of the sec- 

 ond week the interest for green and black and, secondarily, for 

 violet prevailed over everything else, and during the following 

 weeks, after I had ceased to question him about colors, he would 

 bring me objects, mostly green and black, and gave their names 

 correctly. 



As to the question whether an evolution of the color-sense is to 

 be found in the individual and, in particular, whether the young 

 child's color-sense is a different, a simpler one than that of 

 the adult, the observation of a single case gives but qualified 

 information. The experiments that I have reported offer, it must 

 be admitted, positive proof that in this one case the color vision 

 of the son showed itself to be superior to, or more complex than, 

 that of the father, and that at any rate, for children of this age, the 

 universal prevalence of any form of dichromatic color vision cannot 

 be maintained. I myself had not expected to obtain so clear a 

 proof of the presence of trichromatic color-vision. 



The experiments are also in a certain sense instructive if one 

 considers them in relation to the older ones of Preyer,^ Bald- 

 win,- etc. My aim was, however, a different one from that of 

 these two authors, and from Baldwin's my investigation differs, 

 too, markedly in method. To draw from Baldwin's experiments 

 any conclusions about the ability of the child under investigation 

 to discriminate colors seems to me impossible. 



Those of Preyer are decidedly better, and yet I am not quite 

 clear, from his description, what degrees of color-discrimination 

 his child had reached at the respective periods. Some statements 

 awaken the suspicion that Preyer's child had dichromatic (red- 

 blind or green-blind) color vision, but, as I said, that is only 

 suspicion. It must be remembered that his researches were the 

 first in this field, that he had, therefore, the entire method to 

 create. 



The most interesting thing in Preyer's report is, according to 

 my judgment, his concluding compilation in which he gives the 

 various per cents, of wrong and right answers that he had received 

 to his questions about the different colors. These are calculated, 



^Loc. cil. 

 -J. M. Baldwin, Mental Development in the child and the Race. 1895; German edition, 1898. 



