134 



SCIENCE. 



[N. S. Vol. IX. No. 230. 



Saghalin they had not seen anything of the 

 kind. Then I visited the villages Taran- 

 kotan and Taraika, where I first fell in with 

 the Ainu. I also visited the Tungus vil- 

 lages Unu, Miiiko and Walit, after having 

 passed the famous lake of Taraika. It was 

 impossible to proceed farther eastward, 

 since I received an ofiBcial letter of warning 

 not to proceed, because a few versts farther 

 east a band of highwaymen consisting of 

 escaped convicts had built a fort and were 

 terrorizing the country. For this reason 

 I returned without making the acquaintance 

 of these gentlemen. 



On New Year's Eve I reached Siska. 

 Ou the following day I took phonographic 

 records of songs, which created the greatest 

 sensation among the Russians as well as 

 among the natives. A young Gilyak 

 woman who sang into the instrument said : 

 " It took me so long to learn this song, 

 and this thing here learned it at once, 

 without making any mistakes. There is 

 surely a man or a devil in this box which 

 imitates me! " And at the same time she 

 was crying and laughing from excitement. 



On the second of January I started by 

 dog-sledge for Naiero, where I had the best 

 results in my work with the Ainu. Then 

 I visited all the settlements on the coast as 

 far as Naibuchi, which is 260 versts from 

 Siska. This journey was exceedingly diffi- 

 cult, and sometimes even dangerous. At 

 one tinae I narrowly escaped drowning 

 when passing the ice at the foot of a steep 

 promontory. I broke through the ice, 

 which was much weakened by the waves. 

 Fortunately, my guide, who was travelling 

 in front of me, happened to capsize on his 

 sledge at the same moment when I broke 

 through. Thus it happened that he saw 

 my situation and extricated me with his 

 staff. 



Towards the end of the month I arrived 

 at Korsakovsk, making the distance from 

 JSTaibuchi, about 100 versts, on horseback. 



Originally I intended to return from this 

 point along the west coast of the island ; 

 but this proved to be impossible, as there 

 is no means of communication in winter. 

 For this reason I had to return northward 

 the same way bj' which I came, and I had 

 to travel as rapidly as possible in order to 

 reach Nikolaievsk in time. Towards the 

 end of March communication between the 

 island and mainland over the ice is sus- 

 pended. Therefore, I returned with all 

 possible speed ; working and collecting, 

 however, when opportunity offered. The 

 last few days I travelled day and night, 

 camping a few houi'S, but not more than 

 necessary to give the reindeer time to rest. 

 At nine o'clock this morning I arrived 

 here, having covered, since six o'clock yes- 

 terday morning, a distance of 200 versts. 



ON THE BRIGBTNESS OF PIGMENTS BY 

 OBLIQUE VISION* 



In the formation of any theory of color- 

 vision the phenomena of color-blindness 

 necessarily play an important part. This 

 is especially true, of late years, of total color- 

 blindness, or the absence of all color-sense. 

 Of this phenomena there are three classes, 

 exemplified by the eyes of those rare indi- 

 viduals who lack from birth all power of 

 perceiving color by the normal eye in faint 

 light and by the peripheral vision of the 

 normal retina. 



In each of these three cases the spectrum 

 appears as a colorless band of graduated 

 brightness. It was pointed out by Hering, 

 in 1891, that the disti-ibution of brightness 

 in the first two of these three classes is the 

 same, and it has been generally supposed 

 that the color-blindness of the retinal per- 

 iphery is of similar character. Von Kries 

 showed, however, that this supposition was 

 untrue (Zeitschr. fur Psychologie und Phys- 



*A paper read at the Boston meeting of the Amer- 

 ican Association for the Advancement of Science, 

 August, 189S 



