682 



SCIENCE. 



[N. S. Vol. XXII. No. 509. 



cussion and reading of our faces they finally 

 decided that they were green. 



Several days later we took the matter of 

 color perception into the Dagami schools. 

 Mr. Sullivan, their teacher, asked a nine-year- 

 old girl the color of a handkerchief that she 

 wore about her neck. She answered correctly 

 that it was blue. But to his next question she 

 replied that the grass was the same color. 

 Another girl about ten years old pronounced a 

 rather dark green leaf maitum — black. A 

 class of thirteen girls in the same school, 

 ranging in age from eight to twelve years, 

 named properly and without any difficulty the 

 colors of pencils painted red and yellow. But 

 the green and blue pencils they could not at 

 all name. They simply could not perceive the 

 green and blue as such. 



On September 9, 1902, in dealing with a 

 class nine to ten years or older, who had had 

 no chance either in Spanish or American 

 times to improve themselves, I found them 

 very ready to recognize red and yellow. All 

 seven would respond with the propet" Visayan. 

 words for these colors. One of the class wore 

 dark blue trousers; they were decidedly blue, 

 yet not as dark as navy blue. For the color of 

 these trousers six of the boys gave the Visayan 

 word maitum — black — and the seventh boy, to 

 get ahead of his classmates, shouted out the 

 Spanish word negro — black. The same class 

 had no difficulty with the red and yellow as 

 given in the color chart of E. G. Eegal's 

 ' Lessons for Little Readers,' Heath and Com- 

 pany. But I found they as readily called 

 light blue green or brown as anything, and 

 no better did they handle the green. 



Mr. H. E. Guyer, one of the American 

 teachers at Tacloban, gave me the following 

 statement : 



The dullest boy in my school has never called 

 a red ball anything but a red ball. Except for a 

 thoughtless boy's answer they invariably call a 

 yellow ball yellow. In other colors I can not 

 rely vipon them, except some few who have memo- 

 rized them. And even they flounder if I mix the 

 colors up. 



It daas been suggested that these observations 

 may be worthless on the ground that any chil- 



dren might make similar mistakes in naming 

 colors. I can not think that these observations 

 can be explained away in this manner, be- 

 cause, in the first place, if this were the cause 

 the colors mistaken would not have been so 

 constantly green and blue. And, secondly, 

 this differs radically from results of experi- 

 ments made upon children of parents who 

 have a well-defined perception of blue and 

 green. Marx Lobsien in a series of experi- 

 ments upon German school children observed 

 that the three fundamental colors, Rot, Gelh 

 und Blau, were almost accurately handled. 

 Of these blue was more accurately handled 

 than yellow. " Nach meinen Untersuchungen 

 steht am hochsten in der Wertung da das Rot. 

 Es wurde auf alien Alterstufen immer richtig 

 aufgefasst und benannt; ihm fast gleich, nur 

 auf der fiinften Stufe findet sieh eine kleine 

 Unterschwankung, ist das Blau, dann folgen 

 3 Gelb, 4 Griin, wahrend Orange, Violette, 

 Indigo unverhaltnissmassig ungiinstig da- 

 stehen." ^ 



It has also been explained that primitive 

 men have no words for green and blue because 

 they have no interest in these colors. Rivers 

 found that the Paupan name for red was the 

 modified term used to designate the female 

 parrot Eclectus polychlorios. On the island of 

 Leyte there is a dark blue snake with a yellow 

 head which the natives fear greatly because 

 of its poisonous fangs. If so inoffensive an 

 animal as a parrot could have attracted the 

 early Paupans and given them their name for 

 red, one marvels that the early Yisayans were 

 not attracted by this snake to blue. I have 

 no doubt that other instances could be found 

 in which green and blue were strikingly pre- 

 sented, so that the pre-Spanish Yisayans 

 would have taken notice of them if they had 

 seen these colors as such. 



These observations, therefore, lend weight 

 to the theory that the eye, in its evolution as 

 a color-sensing organ, saw at first only the 

 colors at the red end of the spectrum; and 

 seem to show that the Yisayans, at least at 

 the time when they were discovered by the 



'^ Zeitsch. f. Psych, und Phys., etc., Bd. XXXIV., 

 Heft I., January 19, 1904, p. 35. 



