4 Baldivin Spencer: 



the only colour materials available to him for use during the 

 performance of his ceremonies, and therefore his appreciation 

 of colour has been limited to these few pigments. Just as in. 

 the development of colour amongst flowers, .blue is the highest 

 and latest, so amongst human beings blue seems to have been 

 the latest pigment discovered and appreciated, and it was not,, 

 so far as I am aware, before the white man, most unfortunately, 

 introduced Reckitt's Blue into Australia, Melanesia and Poly- 

 nesia, thereby spoiling aboriginal art, that the savage had any 

 distinct appreciation of this colour. In the Kakadu tribe, for 

 example, the same word is used for blue and green, and the. 

 natives do not discriminate between the two, nor do they between 

 black, brown and grey. It is not a case of having one word 

 to describe two or three colours which in reality thev differ- 

 entiate, but they do not, apparently, distinguish the one from the 

 j« other." One day amongst the Kakadu tribe, on the Alligator 

 River in the far northern part of the Territory, I was sitting 

 under a grove of banana trees, and three natives, with whom I 

 was discussing the question of colour, told me that the green 

 leaves all around and above them were the same colour as the 

 sky. It may be said in passing that the presence of a blue 

 pigment on any Australian ornament or implement that finds 

 its way into one or other of our museums is regarded by • all 

 Curators as clear proof that the tribe from which it comes has 

 lost its primitive outlook on art. 



It appears to me that the theories of Mr. Mathew and others 

 postulate a fine colour sense that at least our Australian! 

 aboriginal does not possess. Not only is this so, but, after- 

 most careful examination, made again with the aid of standard 

 . colour tints, comparing these with the actual colour of the skin 

 of very many natives in various tribes, I have not been able 

 to discriminate in any way between the colours of the mem- 

 bers of the different moieties or classes of any tribe. In the 

 southern Arunta the colour of the women was slightly, but only 



7. It is somewhat difficult to express this matter accurately., If shown' 

 black, brown and grey objects, such as skeins of wool, or coloured card- 

 board, they will apply the same term co each. On the other hand, if (a) 

 shown an object of a particular shade of colour such as their ow;n skin, and< 

 (b) asked to match this with one of three or four shades of chocolate brown, 

 they will, after consideration, . usually pitch on the correct one. Black, 

 brown and grey are apparently, to them, only what we should call " shades "" 

 of the same colour, indistinguishable from one another unless placed side by 

 side. ' • 



