THE ANTHROPOLOGY AND NATURAL HISTORY OF TORRES STRAITS, 587 
_ Of the special investigations undertaken by myself, that on visual acuity will 
be the subject of a paper in another Section. 
The colour vision of the natives was investigated in several ways. A hundred 
and fifty natives of Torres Straits and Kiwai were tested by means of the usual 
wool test for colour-blindness without finding one case. About eighty members of 
other races, including Australians, Polynesians, Melanesians, Tamils, and half-castes, 
were also tested without finding one case, except among natives of Lifu. No 
less than three out of eight natives of this island were found to suffer from well- 
marked red-green blindness of the ordinary type. Unfortunately the number of 
Lifu natives who could be examined was too small to allow any definite conclu- 
sions to be drawn, but the possibility is suggested that colour-blindness may be 
a racial peculiarity, a fact which, if established, would be of great ethnological 
importance. 
The names used for colours by the natives of Murray Island, Mabuiag, and 
Kiwai were very fully investigated, and the derivation of such names in most 
cases established. The colour vocabularies of these islands showed the special 
feature which appears to characterise many primitive languages. There were 
definite names for red, less definite for yellow, and still less so for green, while a 
definite name for blue was either absent or borrowed from English. 
The three languages mentioned, and some Australian languages, seemed to 
show different stages in the evolution of a colour vocabulary. Several Australian 
natives (from Seven Rivers and the Fitzroy River) appeared to be almost limited to 
words for red, white, and black. In Kiwai there was no word for blue, for which 
colour the same word was used as for black, while the name applied to green 
appeared to be inconstant and indefinite. In Murray Island the native word for 
blue was the same as that used for blacks, but the English word had been adopted 
and modified into di/w-biilu. The language of Mabuiag was more advanced ; there 
was a word for blue (maludgamulnga, sea-colour), but it was often also used for 
een. 
id Corresponding to this defect of colour terminology, there appeared to be an 
actual defect of vision for colours of short wave-length. In testing with coloured 
wools, no mistake was ever made with reds, but blues and greens were constantly 
confused, as were blue and violet. The same deficiency in seeing blue seemed also 
to be shown in experiments on the threshold of sensitiveness for red, yellow, and 
blue, carried out with Lovibond’s tintometer. Experiments on the distance at 
which small patches of different colours could be recognised also showed great 
inferiority in seeing blue as compared with red, but the few comparative observa- 
tions so far made do not enable one to say that there is any striking difference 
between Europeans and Papuans in this respect. 
Observations were also made on the colour vision of the peripheral retina, on 
after-images, and on colour contrast. 
Observations were made by means of Hening’s fall experiment which showed 
the existence of binocular vision in all except one man with an orbital tumour. 
Quantitative observations were made on some visual illusions. 
Numerous observations were made on writing and drawing, the former chiefly 
in the case of children. ‘The most striking result here was the ease and correctness 
with which mirror writing was performed. In many cases native children, when 
asked to write with the left hand, spontaneously wrote mirror writing, and all 
were able to write in this fashion readily. In some cases children, when asked to 
write with the left hand, wrote upside down. 
Experiments were made on the estimation of time. The method adopted was 
to give signals marking off a given interval; another signal was then given as the 
commencement of a second interval, which the native had to finish by a similar 
signal when he judged it to be equal to the given interval. This somewhat difficult 
procedure met with unexpected success, and intervals of 10 seconds, 20 seconds, 
and one minute were estimated with fairly consistent results, 
Nearly all the investigations gave some indication of the liability to fatigue 
and the capability for improvement by practice, but these were also the subject of 
a special investigation carried out by modifications of Kraepelin’s methods, 
