IHANSACTIONS OF SECTION D. — DEPT. ANATOMY AND PHYSIOLOGY. 715 



and more under the influence of scientific knowledge. That this change is already 

 in progress we have abundant evidence. We need make no effort to hasten the 

 process, for we may be quite sure that, as soon as science is competent to dictate, 

 art will be ready to obey. 



The following Papers were read : — 



1. On the Development of the Golour- sense. 

 By Dr. Montagu Lubbock. 



The author remarked that this was a subject which had only been discussed 

 within the last five and twenty years. Mr. Gladstone was the first to open this 

 question, his studies of the Homeric poems leading him to remark how few colom'S 

 were mentioned by that poet, and how inexactly the colour-terms were used. 

 This Mr. Gladstone accounted for, in his ' Studies on Homer and the Homeric Age,' 

 published" in 1858, by supposing that Homer's perceptions of colour were vague 

 and indeterminate, owing to the organ of colour and its impressions being 

 but partially developed among the Greeks of his age. 



The author then stated that the object of the paper was to discuss the question 

 whether there was evidence to show that the power of perceiving colour had been 

 gradually acquired, not only by man in historic or prehistoric times, but by the 

 animal kingdom at large. 



The first explained briefly the meaning of the term ' Colour Sense,' or 

 ' Perception of Colour,' observing that Newton first showed the white light of the 

 sun to be formed of seven colours ; that these seven colom-s could be observed 

 separately, and in a certain definite order, if the white light of the sun was 

 decomposed by means of a prism, and that mankind had been supposed to acquire 

 perception of the different colours in the order of the colours of the solar spectrum. 



The author observed that colour-blindness had been supposed to be a return 

 to the primitive condition of vision in mankind, but that since red-colom:-blindness 

 was the usual form of that complaint, whereas red was supposed to be the first 

 ■colour seen by man, there were no grounds for this supposition. 



The author then recalled what had been already written on this subject. 

 Mr. Gladstone had fii-st opened the subject, as already stated, Lazarus Geiger 

 having been the next to take up the question, in a paper read at Frankfort-on-the- 

 Maine in 1867. Geiger believed the power of percei\ang colour to have been 

 gradually acquired, and that even within historic times. Neither in the Vedas of 

 the Hindus, nor in the Zendavesta of the Parsees, had he found indications of 

 developed colour-perception, any mention of blue colour being entirely absent 

 from both, though the sky, on the one hand, and light on the other, were specially 

 considered. Similarly no mention was made of green colour either in the Rigveda 

 hymns or in the Zendavesta, though both often speak of the earth and its vegeta- 

 tion. In 1867 Hugo Magnus wrote a work upon this subject, entitled 'Die 

 Entwickelung des Farbensinnes.' Believing in the same progressive appreciation 

 of colours as Geiger, he supposed that at first mankind merely perceived white 

 and black, the presence or absence of light ; that red was the first colour to be 

 recognised, the power of perceiving the other colours being gradually acquired in 

 the order of the colours in the solar spectrum, from the red to the violet end. 

 Magnus believed that it was whilst red and black were alone distinguished that 

 the hymns of the Vedas were written, that yellow was also recognised in the time 

 of Homer, and that it was only at a later date that the perception of green 

 followed, the recognition of blue and violet coming last, that the evolution of 

 the colour-sense was still incomplete, and that the time would come when the 

 ultra-violet rays would be appreciated by the human eye. 



The subject of the colour-sense was more thoroughly investigated by Grant 

 Allen, in a work published in 1879. He pointed out that three periods of geo- 

 logical vegetation may be supposed to have existed, termed respectively the age of 

 flowerless, the age of anemophilous, and the age of entomophilous plants. That in 

 the Carboniferous period there exist traces of insects, which insects must have 

 jsought their food in the flowerless plants of that age. That plants would thus be 



