150 REYIEWS — RESEARCHES ON COLOUR-BLINDNESS. 



red rose in my life) and yet on recently taking up an oil-paint, to illustrate to anoth- 

 er my conception of the colour of the lips, you will be astonished to hear that I took 

 up a green (terre verfe). On another occasion I was very much annoyed at a little 

 bey who could tell a blue line of water-colour, drawn across my tinker, from blood ; 

 I could see no difference. Strawberries, cherries, etc., I can recognise without the 

 slightest difficulty, but I don't trouble myself about their colour; I see only a differ- 

 ence as regards what I call shade. Pinks, lilacs, purples, and blues, are all the 

 same colour, only differing in intensity. Browns, russets, maroons, olives, citrines, 

 and a host of others, are just anything that I can guess at, but I never get further 

 than red, brown, or green. The names of the other colours I don't think I ever 

 uttered. Indeed I never speak of colours unless I cannot avoid it, and the only 

 practical mistake I ever made in regard to them was purchasing a purple neckloth 

 under the impression that it was black. That was the only mistake; for a good rea- 

 son, I never bought a coloured piece of dress, alone, either before or since. I may 

 mention that the same colour, when presented to my eye on different objects, espe- 

 cially with unlike surfaces, often, I may say generally, appears quite different on 

 each. 



" I have now given you the best account I can of my case. It appears to myself 

 on reading it over, very absurd, ami would lead one to ask, ' What can he see ?' 

 Yet I have the firm idea and feeling in my own mind, that I see colours the same, 

 and as distinctly as you do, but they produce no lasting effect on the eye at all, aud 

 I cannot recognise them again." 



(Case of Dr. K., a medical man, described by himself .) 

 "To endeavour to familiarize my eye to the primary and prismatic colors, I keep 

 in my writing desk, and look almost daily at, a chart oi the primary and prismatic 

 colours. These, I think, I know on the card, but I make sad blunders when I leave 

 the card and look at silks, cloths, powders, fluids, or flowers. Indeed, / dare not 

 ■name any colour, and endeavour at all times to describe objects by other characters 

 than those of colour. 



When a boy at school, my attention was directed to my want of knowledge of 

 colour by finding I could not see what my father called the bright red berries of the 

 holly. When other children easily found out the trees which were loaded with ripe 

 cherries, I never could till I came so near as to detect the form of the fruit. The 

 discovery of this defect in vision distressed my father exceedingly, and he endea- 

 voured to cultivate in me a knowledge of colour by giving me lessons in painting, 

 making coloured charts for me of the prismatic and other colours, wishing to believe 

 that the defect resulted from want of education in colour, not from a visual defect. 

 I destroyed many a painting of flowers, etc., by putting on wrong colours, as blues 

 for purples, green for some kinds of red, and yellow for others. I still remember 

 the surprise he exhibited when he found I could not detect a red cloak spread over 

 a hedge, across a narrow field —hedge and cloak appeared to me the same exact hue, 

 and they do so to this day. 



" Blue and yellow are to me the brightest of all colours. Red (that is scarlet) 

 is to me a pleasing sober colour, which refreshes my eye as much as green ; indeed 

 I cannot tell any difference in colour between certain shades of these. Red sealing 

 wax and grass, for instance, are absolutely the same exact colour. Some shades of 

 brown, green and red, I cannot detect to be different. Prussian blue and rouge have 

 the same hue. A rose, the lips, a ruddy complexion, and the face of a man dis- 



