J.— fSYCHOLOGY. 183 



In 1898, in which year he was given the degree of Hon. M.A. at 

 Cambridge, Rivers tooli a fresh path in his varied career by accepting 

 Dr. A. C. Haddon's invitation to join the Cambridge Anthropological 

 Expedition to the Torres Straits. This was the first expedition in which 

 systematic worli was carried out in the ethnological application of the 

 methods and apparatus of experimental psychology. His former pupils, 

 Prof. W. McDougall and I, assisted Elvers in this new field. Rivers 

 interested himself especially in investigating the vision of the natives— 

 their visual acuity, their colour vision, their colour nomenclature, and 

 their susceptibility to certain visual geometric illusions. He continued 

 to carry out psychological work of the same comparative ethnological 

 character after his return from the Torres Straits in Scotland (where 

 he and I sought comparative data), during a visit to Egypt in the winter 

 of 1900, and from 1901-2 in his expedition to the Todas of Southern 

 India. 



The Torres Straits expedition marked a turning-point in Rivers 's 

 life interests, as they were for the first time directed towards ethnological 

 studies, to which he became ardently devoted ever after, until his death 

 removed one who at the time was President of the Royal Anthropological 

 Institute, had in 1920-1 been President of the Folk Lore Society, and 

 had in 1911 been President of Section H (Anthropology) of this 

 Association. His ethnological and sociological work during his expedi- 

 tion to the Todas and during his two subsequent expeditions to Melanesia 

 are too well known to need mention here. It was Rivers 's own view 

 that his most important contributions to science are to be found in the 

 two volumes of his ' History of Melanesian Society,' published in 19] 4 



His psychological investigations among the Torres Straits islanders 

 Egyptians and Todas (Reports of the Cambridge Anthrop Exped to 

 Torres Straits, vol. ii., Pt. I., pp. 1-132; J. of Anthrop. Inst vol xxxi 

 pp. 229-47; Brit. J. of Psychol, vol. i., pp. 321-96) will ever stand 

 as models of precise, methodical observations in the field of ethnoloc^ical 

 psychology. Nowhere does he disclose more clearly the admir^'ably 

 scientific bent of his mind— his insistence on scientific procedure his 

 dehght m scientific analysis, and his facility in adapting scientific 

 methods to novel experimental conditions. He reached the^conclusion 

 that no substantial difference exists between the visual acuity of civilised 

 and uncivilised peoples, and that the latter show a very definite diminu 

 tion in sensibility to blue, which, as he suggested, is perhaps attributable 

 to the higher macular pigmentation among coloured people^ He 

 observed a generally defective nomenclature for blue, green and' brown 

 among primitive peoples, both white and coloured, and large differences 

 m the frequency of colour-blindness among the difTerent uncivilised 

 peoples whom he examined. In his work on visual illusions he found 

 that the vertical-honzontal-line illusion was more marked while the 

 Mu ler-Lyer illusion was less marked, among uncivilised than amon- 

 civilised communities; and he concluded that the former illusion was 

 therefore dependent rather on physiological, the latter rather on psv- 

 chological factors, the former being contracted, the latter beii 

 avoured, by previous experience, e.g. of drawing lines or of appre 

 hendmg complex figures as wholes. -^^ 



