250 ON ACCIDENTAL OR SUBJECTIVE COLORS. 



perceive, indeed, that tliere are more than two tints, but I cannot distinguish 

 them, nor even conceive the difference." 



Let us cite, as a last example, that of the Harris family, reported by M. 

 Hudart in a letter to the celebrated Priestley : 



"Harris, a shoemaker, of Maryport, in Cumberland, could judge without dif- 

 ficulty of the size and form of bodies, but he was without the power of distin- 

 guishing their colors. He was well aware that objects offered to the sight of 

 other men something which they readily recognized, though undiscernible to 

 him ; that they expressed in words certain qualities of those objects which he 

 could only designate at hazard and with hesitation. It was at the age of seven 

 that he first became apprised of this imperfection. Having found, one day, a 

 child's stocking, he entered a neighboring house to learn to whom it belonged; 

 he observed that every one spoke of it as a red stocking, but as the term had 

 no meaning for him, he regarded it as merely superfluous and thought it enough 

 to call it a stocking. The circumstance remained, however, impressed on his 

 mind, and some similar observations which he afterwards made enlightened him 

 as to the state of his vision. 



" The sensation of color being the first we experience, it will appear surpris- 

 ing, no doubt, that he had not sooner discovered what was wanting to his per 

 ceptions. But this difficulty will be removed when it is stated that his relatives 

 were Quakers, and that a grave uniformity of colors is generally as strictly ob- 

 served by this class of persons in their dwellings as in theu- vesture. Harris 

 discerned objects, whatever their distance, as well as others, when their form 

 sufficed to convey an exact idea ; but his vision was at fault as regarded bodies 

 which are only appreciable by the color. His companions could distinguish 

 from afar the cherries on a tree, where to him there appeared nothing but leaves, 

 and it was only by approaching near enough to judge of the relative form and 

 size that he could discriminate between the foliage and fruit. He was quite 

 capable of distinguishing between black and white or a bright light ; and for 

 him the other colors ranged between these two extremes according to their 

 brightness or obscurity. Hence he was often led to confound or comprise under 

 one name very different colors, because to him they presented the same lustre. 

 If a riband was striped with different colors, he did not confound it with a plain 

 one, but he could only perceive in it degrees of light and shade more or less 

 marked. 



"Harris was an intelligent man and fond of knowledge, especially that which 

 relates to light and colors. Two of his brothers were born with the same defect 

 as himself, but two other brothers and two sisters were exempt. Having met, 

 in Dublin, with one of his brothers, a mariner, of Maryport, I proposed to ex- 

 amine his vision, and obtained the following results : As I had no prism at com- 

 mand, I asked him if he had ever seen a rainbow ; he assured me that he had 

 often observed it, had counted all the colors, but could not call them by name. 

 I presented a riband, in which he recognized several colors and attempted to 

 name that of each of the squares of which it was composed. The white ones 

 he distinguished without hesitation, but he confounded the black with the 

 brown, saying that they were only shades of the same color. When pointed to 

 a green square, he replied : ' To me it seems that this is the color which you 

 call yellow.' A red square, with him, was hlue, and he was confident of seeing 

 green when I showed him orange. I asked him, finally, whether he thought 

 that what we call colors were anything else than degrees of brightness and 

 shade, or whether he believed that there was still some other difference. To 

 this he replied doubtingly, that he imagined he could observe something else, 

 of which, however, he could give no account," 



We should exceed our limits if we attempted to present to our readers the 

 observations carefully collected by the authors before cited ; a summary account 

 of them will suffice and lead us naturally to a consideration of the theoretical 



