71^7- Rivers, The colour vision of the Eskimo. 143 



The colour vision of the Eskimo. By W. H. R. Rivers, M.A., 

 St John's College. 



[Received 9 March 1901.] 



The observations described in this paper were made on the 

 same party of Labrador Eskimo of whom Mr Duckworth and 

 Mr Pain have already given an account in the Proceedings of this 

 Society 1 . I am indebted to Mr Taber for his permission to 

 examine these people. 



A few previous observations have been recorded. 



Bessels 2 obtained the names of coloured papers from sixteen 

 individuals belonging to Smith Sound. All could distinguish red, 

 blue, yellow, green, black and white, but had no names for 

 gradations of intensity. The same name was given to both brown 

 and blue, and Bessels believed that these people were unable to 

 distinguish the two colours. 



In 1880 Virchow 3 obtained the names of colours from five 

 Eskimo from Labrador. He gives the names for the chief colours 

 and notes that difficulties only occurred in the cases of orange and 

 yellow on the one hand, and violet and brown on the other. 



Holmgren 4 records that Almquist, a member of the Vega 

 expedition, examined 125 Eskimo in Port Clarence in Behring 

 Straits, and found only one to be colour-blind. 



I have also consulted Erdmann's Eskimo dictionary 5 , which is 

 based on the work of missionaries in Labrador, and the compara- 

 tive vocabulary drawn up by Rink 6 . 



I examined eighteen individuals (ten males and eight females) 

 with Holmgren's wools. All understood the method quite readily 

 and none were colour-blind. Nearly all put red and pink wools 

 together but, as the names given later to the colours showed, they 

 evidently distinguished the two colours well. Blue and green 



1 Proc. Camb. Phil. Soc, vol. x., p. 286, 1900. 



2 Arch.f. Anthropol., vol. vin., 1875, p. 107. 



3 Verhandl. d. Berlin. Gesellsch. f. Anthropol., 1880, p. 266. 



4 Upsala Ldkaref or enings for handling er, vol. xv., 1880, p. 222. 



5 Eskimoisches Worterbnch, by F. Erdmaun, Budissin, 1864. 



6 The Eskimo Tribes, by H. Rink, Copenhagen and London, 1887. 



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