72 Transactions.— Miscellaneous. 
Maori has descried something at a great distance,—something white, or 
whitish, or, at all events, of a lighter colour than its environment ; whether 
a distant sail at sea,—or a slip of earth or spot in a far-off cliff,—or a patch 
of snow on the mountain’s crest,—or a white-breasted pigeon high up in a 
tree,—or a gull flying over the sea,—or a settler’s house, or even a sheep 
in the distance ;—how readily his eye had caught the object, and that 
entirely owing to its light or white colour. Now this is quite in keeping 
with our latest scientific investigation concerning what is known as 
*colour-blindness;” and serves to show, to establish, a priori, how very 
free the Maoris must have been from all such infirmity. Indeed, for my 
part, and separate from my experience and experiments among them, I 
cannot perceive how the old Maoris were to live if such a failing ever 
existed, seeing that so very much in their daily life depended on their 
faculty of clear, correct and distant sight. Neither can I bring myself to 
believe that any such imperfection ever pertained to man in a state of 
nature. 
I find that Mr. Brudenell Carter, F.R.C.S., has lately been giving a 
series of Cantor lectures at the Society of Arts on colour-blindness; and, 
among other things, he clearly showed and explained how ‘that the 
appearance of the world to the colour-blind must be less bright, less 
luminous, than to the colour-sighted; and that the appearance of white- 
ness, as familiar to the latter, must be unknown to the former. Whiteness 
is the result of the blending of the three primary colours of the spectrum in 
correct proportions, and the colour-blind, who perceive only two of these 
primaries, and can consequently only blend two, must see white surfaces as 
if their colour were compounded of red and violet, of green and violet, or of 
red and green, according to the primary which was wanting from the per- 
ception of the individual.” 
But I must close. 
Wishing to do justice to my subject, my paper is more diffuse and anec- 
dotical, and at the same time longer, than I had originally intended. I fear, 
moreover, that, in a few instances, I may at first sight seem to be a little 
tautological. But when I considered, on the one hand, what Mr. Stack 
had painfully endeavoured to establish (as against the old Maoris’ superior 
natural faculties, and especially their knowledge of colours),—and, on the 
other hand, my own long and varied experience to the direct contrary, it 
seemed to me that I had no alternative left, if I wished the truth to be 
known concerning them, but to state what I knew, and to supplement the 
same with a few facts in support thereof: which, if I did not thus make 
known, would in all probability die with me, 
we i as Ase eae amen Manhee Se ee te ee eae ve bi 
