56 JOURNAL OF SCIENCE. 
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according to almost all authorities, is still numerous, and it is to be 
hoped that someone will put on record a careful set of observations 
of this kind before it is too late. This, one of the finest of the savage 
races, ought not to be allowed to pass into decadence before this is 
done. There are four papers of an anthropometric character in the 
‘“‘'Transactions.’’ Three deal with the colour sense of the Maori, and to 
these I shall refer again. One, read betore the Wellington Philosophical 
Society by Mr. Knox, gives a short description of the skeleton of an 
aboriginal Chatham Islander. It is printed in volume V, and it is quite 
within our power to write papers of this kind down here. We may 
not have tlie living Maori, but we may surely have his bones, at least 
his skull. Much may be learned from a series of careful measurements 
of the skull alone, and this is a branch of the subject to which I shall 
willingly devote myself when opportunity offers. But I find that 
Maori skulls are not easily got. Collectors of Maori relics usually 
look on skulls as curios, and hoard them up in little private museums, 
where they le hidden during the collector’s lifetime, and after his 
death, not at all improbably, are lost or, being unauthenticated, become 
useless for the purpose I speak of. There is nothing to prevent 
amateurs measuring and recording the skulls in their collections ; but 
since Broca’s time craniometry has become not a particularly easy 
matter, and the instruments required are expensive. It is, of course, 
2% simple enough matter to take certain measurements of a skull, but 
the great value of an enquiry of this kind lies in the results being 
such as may be compared with the works of others. Thus all measure- 
ments ought to be done in the same way, and modern anthropologists 
almost invariably follow the directions of the distinguished French- 
man I have referred to, and for this system of measurements a number 
of special instruments are required. I hope the time will come when 
I shall be in a position to publish in our ‘‘ Transactions” some addition 
to our knowledge of this subject. The other three papers are devoted 
to the colour sense of the Maoris, and of their power to appreciate and 
distinguish colours. One of these, by Mr. Stack, is published in volume 
XII. The remaining two by Mr. Colenso, are to be found in volume 
XIV. Perhaps a brief allusion to these papers will not be out of 
place. Some years ago a theory was propounded that primeval man was 
colour-blind, that the world to his sense of vision was dull and grey. 
The sky gave him no sense of blue, for him there was no green in the 
forests, no yellow, no red in the flowers or the sunsets ; these and the 
rainbow affected our ancestors as but mixtures in varying proportions 
of black and white. That as the centuries passed on our colour sensa- 
tions gradually came to us—first red, then orange, then yellow, then 
green, then blue. That the Homeric Greeks were at the stage of being 
able to distinguish red and yellow with their shades and mixtures, 
the second stage of the evolution of the colour sense according to this 
theory.. From that day to this the education of this sense has gone on 
continuously, and we are now able to see the range of colour from red 
to violet, but much of the spectrum is yet unmastered. The principal 
supporters of this theory are Mr. Gladstone and Dr. Magnus, a German 
oculist. It is mainly by philological arguments that they endeavour 
to convince us of the truth of their theory, but it would be out of place 
to discuss the question now, suffice it to say that much was written on 
both sides in 1877 and 1878, and that two of the papers were read by 
