ORIGIN OF THE COLOUE-SENSE. 



245 



power of distinguisliing colours has increased, even 

 in historical times. The subject has attracted the 

 attention of German philologists, and I have been 

 furnished by a friend with some notes from a work of 

 the late Lazarus Geiger, entitled, Zur Entwichelungs- 

 gescMchte der Menschheit (Stuttgart, 1871). Accord- 

 ing to this writer it appears that the colour of grass and 

 foliage is never alluded to as a beauty in the Vedas 

 or the Zenda vesta, though these productions are con- 

 tinually extolled for other properties. Blue is described 

 by terms denoting sometimes green, sometimes black, 

 showing that it was hardly recognised as a distinct 

 colour. The colour of the sky is never mentioned in 

 the Bible, the Vedas, the Homeric poems, or even in the 

 Koran. The first distinct allusion to it known to Geiger 

 is in an Arabic work of the ninth century. " Hyacin- 

 thine locks'' are black locks, and Homer calls iron 

 violet-coloured." Yellow was often confounded with 

 green ; but, along with red, it was one of the earliest 

 colours to receive a distinct name. Aristotle names 

 three colours in the rainbow — red, yellow, and green. 

 Two centuries earlier Xenophanes had described the 

 rainbow as purple, reddish, and yellow. The Pytha- 

 goreans admitted four primary colours — white, black, 

 red, and yellow ; the Chinese the same, with the addi- 

 tion of green. 



Simultaneously with the first publication of this 

 essay in Macmillaris Magazine, there appeared in the 

 Nineteenth Century an article by Mr. Gladstone on 

 the Colour-sense, chiefiy as exhibited in the poems of 

 Homer. He shows that the few colour-terms used by 

 Homer are applied to such different objects that they 



