30 DR. EDWARD SCHUNCK ON THE 



sunset. Let any one, to test what I maintain, look at any- 

 colour, however brilliant and pure, through a tube black- 

 ened inside, and say whether it appears beautiful. It is 

 the great activity of the eye, which during our waking 

 hours is constantly roaming from object to object, seldom 

 seeing the same thing or the same colour for more than a 

 few consecutive moments, that deceives us. 



3. Much of the confusion as regards the names of colours 

 arises, as it has doubtless at all times arisen, from the habit, 

 difficult to explain, of using inexact designations, and even 

 applying names to colours which we know to be incorrect. 

 Poets, for instance, call gold red, though it is always yellow. 

 We speak of white wines and red wines, though in reality, 

 as we are well aware, they are yellow and purple ; so that 

 a thousand years hence it may be possible for a literary 

 man to say that we were colour-blind, our eyes having not 

 yet acquired the capacity to see yellow and blue, yellow 

 appearing to us colourless and purple red ; and he may in 

 support of this assertion quote the line of a distinguished 

 poet now living who speaks of the tl costly scarlet wine," a 

 term which is still more precise and emphatic than simple 

 red. In the course of an investigation, undertaken a short 

 time ago with another chemist, I found that my collabo- 

 rates and myself never exactly agreed as to the names 

 to be given to the colours we saw. The series which he 

 named blue, violet, purple, crimson, red, orange, I called 

 violet, purple, crimson, red, orange, yellow ; i. e. what was 

 to his eye blue was to mine violet ; his violet was my 

 purple, and so on. There was no reason to suppose that 

 our perception of colour differed, the difference was, in my 

 opinion, simply one of terms. 



The writings of ancient authors abound with instances 

 of the use of colour-names which are seemingly incorrect. 

 We find in Horace (Book IV. Ode 1) the lines : — 



