72 Transactions. — Miscellaneous. 



Maori has descried something at a great distance, — something white, or 

 whitish, or, at all events, of a lighter colom- 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 ^n'on, how very 

 free the Maoris must have been from all such infirmity. Indeed, for my 

 part, and separate fi-om my experience and experiments among them, I 

 cannot perceive how the old Maoris were to live if such a faihng 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, 



