224 PHYSICAL CAUSES OF 



attack it, thus affording sport to the hunter the object of 

 the experiment. But it was not necessarily the redness or 

 the colour that produced the given result ; for curiosity at 

 the sight of anything new, the presence of a cat, or the 

 waving of a handkerchief or any other unfamiliar object 

 would probably have produced the same effect. This red- 

 collared turkey, so successfully employed as a decoy, was 

 simply an exceptional and remarkable sight, and as such 

 attracted its unwary fellows. Again, a tame magpie that 

 was ' excited ' at the sight of red slippers had also a special 

 aversion to blue, so that the sight of ' a dress in bright blue 

 makes him scream loudly' (' Science Gossip'). In both cases 

 the brightness or vividness of the colour appears to have 

 been the cause of the excitement. 



With so many emphatic positive statements, I am not 

 prepared to assert that scarlet is not a mental excitant to 

 certain animals. The analogy of man, and especially the 

 recent experiments of Dr. Ponza, an Italian physician, and 

 of the renowned Jesuit astronomer, Father Secchi, on the 

 effects of colour on human lunatics, tend to an affirmative 

 conclusion. 1 But what I desire to show is 



1. That at present we have no adequate data for deter- 

 mining the exact influence of colours in the lower animals ; 

 while 



2. The subject appears one eminently deserving of, and 

 suitable for, experimental investigation; and 



3. The fruits of such an inquiry may prove of much 

 practical interest and utility in a variety of ways, for in- 

 stance, in scaring certain animals from gardens, fields or 

 houses. 



Intimately connected with this subject is the influence 

 of novel, unusual, unexpected or unfamiliar objects, especially 

 in a state of motion, an influence that includes curiosity, 

 wonder, surprise, amusement, confidence, indifference, awe, 

 attention, alarm, fear and suspicion all as we so constantly 

 see it exhibited in the case of the dog or cat. The want of 



1 It is but proper, however, here to state that my own experiments on the 

 use of coloured at least red and blue glass in the sleeping room windows 

 of insane patients lead me to opposite, or negative, conclusions. 



