702 



NATURE 



{Oct. 31, 1878 



review the various applications of the word given by Mr, 

 Gladstone (N. yjZ, H. 462), we shall find nothing incon- 

 sistent with this explanation. It is applied — 



To eyebrows, to hair, and to the coat of a horse, in any 

 of which cases a very dark brown may be shown. 



To a dark cloud, which may be of the same hue. 



To the serried mass of the Greek and Trojan armies. 

 **The colour of these," says Mr. Gladstone, "must have 

 been derived from their arms, and these would probably 

 be composed in the main of two elements, firstly copper, 

 which is ruddy, and secondly, the hides of oxen upon the 

 shields and elsewhere." He notes that to a normal eye 

 the colours of these are not easy to combine in a common 

 idea : — but to the colour-blind the combination is homo- 

 geneous enough ; they both look dark yellow-brown, and 

 the appearance is quite in accordance with the interpreta- 

 tion of the word kicaueos according to Mr. Gladstone's 

 later view. When in 1858 he appeared generally to 

 favour the blue interpretation he remarked justly that it 

 could not hold in this instance. 



To a very black mourning garment. But the blackest 

 dyes have almost always some leaning either to brown or 

 blue, and the use of another word instead of melas might 

 possibly imply this leaning, without diminishing the 

 intensity of the shade. 



To the sea-sand, just left bare by the water, also yellow- 

 brown. Here again the idea of blue seems inapplicable. 



To Amphitrite, or the sea beating on rocks. The deep 

 sea is dark blue or dark green ; but its appearance close 

 to the shore in shallow places may be so indefinite, that 

 no positive inference can be drawn from this use of the 

 term. 



To the prow of a ship ; this, we know by other passages, 

 was painted with red earth or ochre, and if dark would 

 appear the colour here implied. 



We have here exhausted Mr. Gladstone's list of 

 instances where this difficult word is used clearly as a 

 colour-epithet. They are all perfectly consistent on the 

 colour-blind hypothesis, clearly pointing to the classifica- 

 tion of kuaneos in the yellow group ; for, so far as I can 

 judge, there is not a single instance where its application 

 necessarily implies the idea of blue. 



Mr. Gladstone remarks (H. 465) : — 



*' The uses of this group of words (/..?., the group formed 

 from kuanos) thus appear to exhibit a degree of inde- 

 finiteness hardly reconcileable with the supposition that 

 Homer possessed accurate ideas of colour ; there is no one 

 colour that can cover them all," This is true ; but only 

 suppose him dichromically colour-blind, and the dark 

 yellow-brown hue he may call kuaneos will cover every 

 example where he has used the term. 



XXwpoj. 



I suppose no doubt is entertained that this word, 

 derived from chloe (young herbage), means, and always 

 has meant, green, one of the most plentiful colours in 

 nature, and one of the most positive and distinct to per- 

 sons with ordinary eyes. 



Now Homer's use of the word affords one of the 

 strongest arguments as to the identity of his sensations 

 with those of the colour-blind. Let us see the testimony 

 which Mr, Gladstone offers to this fact. After quoting 

 (H, 467) the application of the word to a pale face, to 

 fresh-pulled twigs, to honey, to an olive-wood club, and 

 to the nightingale, he remarks : — 



" Upon the whole, then, cJdoros indicates rather the absence 

 than the presence of definite colour. If regarded as an epithet 

 of colour it involves at once a hopeless contradiction between 

 the colour of honey on the one side and greenness on the other. 

 Again, the more we assume it to mean green the more startling 

 it becomes that it could have taken paleness, as is manifestly 



the case, for its governing idea The idea of green we 



scarcely find, unless once, connected with this word in the 

 poems of Honier ; and yet it is a remarkable fact that there is 

 no other word in the poems that can eveu be supposed to repre- 



sent a colour, which not the rainbow only, but every-day nature 

 presents so largely to the eye." ' 



Again, in the later article Mr. Gladstone says (N. 

 380 ; the italics are mine) : — 



"It is plain, from the applications "of it, that green was not 

 on the hst of Homer's colours. If I am to choose an Enghsh 

 equivalent for the phrase it will be pale; and pale is not pro- 

 perly an epithet of colour so much as of light, although there 

 may perhaps be deUcted in it a very faint inkling, so to speak, of 

 yellow. If we strive to give the sense of colour we find there is 

 none that will cover them in common, yelloio suiting in some 

 cases, green in others, neither of the two in all." 



Speaking further of the application of chloreis to the 

 nightingale, he adds : — 



" The balance of authority attaches the phrase to the hue or 

 aspect of the bird, and, when so attached, it loses all definite 



idea of colour Evidently enough. Homer's idea in this 



matter could not but be most vague and dim." 



I have quoted these passages in order to show what a 

 remarkably apposite commentary they offer on my own 

 words, written twenty years ago. 



"Green is a colour most perplexing to the patient, Avho 

 cannot be said to manifest any definite sensation about it 

 at all," It would scarcely be possible to give a more 

 appropriate description than Mr. Gladstone has given of 

 the impressions of the colour-blind in regard to green, 

 although in all probability he knew little or nothing of 

 these when he wrote the passages in question. 



I have already explained how this arises, theoretically, 

 from the invisibility of green proper to the colour-blind, 

 and the appearance of green objects to them under false 

 colours. As a matter of practice I have felt, throughout 

 my life, that this colour has been m> greatest stumbling- 

 block, in regard to which my ideas and expressions have 

 gone most astray. 



In order to guess how a colour-blind person would be 

 likely to use the term, we must bear in mind the fact, 

 already stated, that the majority of greens in nature 

 appear to him as varieties of yellow ; chlorine gas, for 

 example, which takes its name from the Greek word, 

 is a decided yellow to me. And further, it is a 

 fact within my own experience that, unless very power- 

 fully coloured, such yellow greens have mostly a pale, 

 washed-out appearance ; indeed, if I find that a new 

 object presents to my eye a sickly pale tint of yellow, I 

 often make a successful chance shot in calling it green. 



Keeping these explanations in mind, Homer' s applica- 

 tions of the word appear quite natural. 



The idea of paleness I have, I think, sufficiently ex- 

 plained. A pale face appears to me just such a sickly 

 yellow as I have described. 



I do not exactly know what the " fresh twigs " pulled 

 by Eumaeus to make a bed for Ulysses would be like, but 

 they would probably be either green or brown, both which 

 present to the colour-blind shades of yellow. 



Honey, a pale yellow, is a perfect match to my eye with 

 varieties of yellow green. 



The club of the cyclops would be the colour of the 

 bark of the olive tree, which is, I believe, a brownish 

 grey, and would still be in the dark yellow category to 

 the colour-blind. 



The application of the term to the nightingale will 

 naturally puzzle the normal-eyed, as the bird has nothing 

 green about him. But he is described (N. 381) as a com- 

 pound of tawny, olive, brown, and ash colour ; and all 

 these, except the last, which I do not quite understand, 

 convey to the colour-blind the impression of modified 

 yellow, by which chiefly they know green. 



Wine-coloured. Homer (N. 377, H. 472), in speaking 

 of wine, uses (omitting aithops, which, Mr, Gladstone 

 thinks, may refer more to sparkling than to colour) two 

 epithets : eruthros, red ; and melas, black. This is con- 



