144 Mr Rivers, The colour vision of the Eskimo. 



were also commonly put together, but as the examination had 

 unfortunately to be carried on by the illumination of the electric 

 light, not much importance can be attached to this. 



The names of the colours were obtained by showing the series 

 of coloured papers sold by Rothe of Leipzig, supplemented by grey 

 and brown papers, and also by showing various wools from 

 Holmgren's set. The names were obtained from different in- 

 dividuals independently of one another. The methods used were 

 exactly the same as those employed in my work in Torres Straits 1 . 



Red was called aupaluktak 2 by all. 



Orange was called quqsutak 3 , or quqsuangaijuk by most in- 

 dividuals. It was also called aupalangaijuk (reddish), or aupalulutuk 

 (light red) by some. 



Yellow was called quqsutak by nearly all. Two men called it 

 quqsutaklarik (real yellow) to distinguish this colour from the 

 orange to which they had already given the same name. One 

 woman called yellow quqsutakqaqoangaijuk (whitish yellow). 



Green and yellowish green were both called iviujuk. One or 

 other of these colours was also called by several natives iviujuk- 

 iviangaijuk (greenish green) meaning probably that the paper in 

 question was green, but not so green as the other. One man 

 called the green paper iviangaijukqaqonetuk, a compound of the 

 word for green and white with the affix " -netuk." 



Blue green was called by most tungajuangaijuk (bluish); also 

 tungajuksolutak-qaqoangaiuk, a compound of the words for blue 

 and white. This colour was also called iviangaijuk (greenish), and 

 iviujuk-kenangaijuk (blackish or dark green). 



Blue was called tungujuktak by most; also tungajuangaijuk 

 (bluish), and tungajuktak-tungalangaijuk (bluish blue), the same 

 form as was also used for green. 



Indigo was tungujuktak, also tungajuktamerik (probably pure 

 blue) and tungajuksorituk (pure blue). 



Violet was called tungajuangaijuk (bluish), by most. It was 



1 See Rep. Brit. Ass., 1899, p. 586. 



2 I have adopted the spelling of Eskimo words which is employed by Boas 

 (Sixth Ann. Rep. Amer. Bureau of Ethnology, p. 413). The letter "q" stands for a 

 guttural sound which Eink describes as something between g, rk, and rkr, and the 

 latter has also used the letter q to express it. The letter x stands for the German 

 "ch" sound. "Au" = the "ow" in how, "ai" the "i" in hide, and "j" corresponds 

 to the English y. 



3 I was very doubtful about the correct spelling of this word. It was certainly 

 pronounced differently by different individuals. Alternative spellings are qut^utak 

 and quqjutak. The word is not given in Erdmann's dictionary and the nearest 

 words to it in Eink's vocabulary are qorsuk, green or yellowish, and qussok or 

 qudjok, white. Three of Virchow's natives used this word, which Virchow spells 

 korsutak or kuksutak, as written by the natives themselves. I also made some of 

 the Eskimo write down their words but found that they used a very simple alphabet 

 and neglected all the phonetic difficulties. 



