24 Harry K. Wolfe, 



brought successively into view. It will be noticed that 

 green is much oftener called blue than blue is called green. 

 Theoretically, we might expect yellow and green to be very 

 often confused, lying as they do adjacent in the spectrum. 

 Practically, however, we can only be surprised that these 

 two colors are ever confounded. Fifty-three children called 

 yellow green. The difficulty in naming yellow is certainly 

 unexpected, and to me is inexplicable. 



Orange offers some curious results. Nearly four hundred 

 children were wise enough not to attempt to designate it. 

 Not quite as many gave the correct name. As might be 

 expected, more than half the answers belong to red and 

 yellow, — red receiving about twice as many as yellow. The 

 preference for red seems much strpnger among the boys than 

 among the girls. Pink and brown receive a large share of 

 these guesses. Among the "other" names given to orange 

 are blue, gray, scarlet, crimson, cream, wine, terra-cotta, 

 plum, white, pumpkin, crab, tomato, strawberry, copper, ver- 

 milion, and several compound names, as reddish pink, yellow- 

 ish red, etc. In all there were thirty-four distinct names 

 given to orange. At least 150 answers are absurd, viz. : all 

 pinks, greens, purples, drabs, and one-half those marked 

 "other." If we attempt the analysis of this matter, a curi- 

 ous state of affairs is revealed. In the first place, these 

 children have no clear ideas either of orange or of the colors 

 whose names were given to orange. They probably have 

 never learned the word 'orange' as the name of a color. (This 

 is doubtless true also of far the larger number of the pupils 

 examined.) Yet they all clearly perceived this color and, 

 while looking at it, called it pinkj green, purple, drab, cream, 

 blue, or crimson. If their conceptions of these colors had 

 been clear and closely associated with the terms, the thought 

 of the word would have recalled the character of the color, 

 and the absurdity would have been evident. Another result 

 of studying the orange table is, that the pupils seem loath to 

 confess their ignorance. Four-fifths of them attempted to 

 name orange, and only one-fifth knew what it was. This 



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