TERMS USED TO DENOTE COLOUR. 27 



were blind to that colour, and that it is only since their 

 day that human vision has been so far developed as to 

 perceive the more refrangible end of the spectrum. The 

 author of the paper referred to arrived at the conclusion 

 that there is no sufficient evidence to show that the faculty 

 of perceiving colour has been acquired by man within his- 

 torical times, a conclusion in which Sir John Lubbock, 

 who took part in the discussion on the paper, entirely 

 concurred. Whatever may have taken place in prehistoric 

 times, there can be little doubt I imagine, looking at the 

 remains adorned with various colours in Egypt and else- 

 where, that the more civilized nations of antiquity, though 

 they had fewer pigments at their disposal than we have, 

 were quite as capable of distinguishing colours as we are. 

 It may indeed be asserted that, so far as appropriate 

 arrangement of tints in dress and other articles of daily 

 use is concerned, no advance has been made since the 

 time of the ancients, but rather that we have in this respect 

 retrograded. Evolutionists tell us that we may obtain a 

 good idea of what our prehistoric ancestors were, by ob- 

 serving the present state of savage and uncivilized races, 

 a state from which we have, in the course of ages, emerged. 

 So far, however, as the appreciation of colour is concerned 

 no superiority on our part can be discovered ; for whoever 

 will, with an unprejudiced eye, compare the harmonious 

 combinations seen in the articles produced by the less 

 civilized nations of India and China, or by the natives of 

 America and Polynesia, with the hideous contrasts and 

 tasteless arrangements so often displayed in our articles of 

 dress and furniture, will probably incline to the opinion 

 that in this respect we may rather be called savages, and 

 that the incapacity for appreciating colour-harmony inhe- 

 rent in the Teutonic branch of the Aryan race has not been 

 removed, but rather intensified by civilization. Much has, 



