340 Report of the Committee on Colour-Vision, 



Evidence of Staff-Surgeon Preston, R.N. 



I have had three years' experience with the testing" for Colour- 

 vision in the Navy, that is, the examination of recruits for the 

 Marines, domestics, stokers, and boys ; also of every class of 

 officer entering the Service, at the Admiralty. In 1888, for which 

 year I only examined a proportion of the cases, the total number 

 examined was 2,935, in 1889 3,856, and in 1890 3,961. With 

 regard to the Service, it is a matter of great importance that we 

 should not have any persons either with defective vision or im- 

 perfect perception of colours, and with a view to that end a 

 printed form is always forwarded to the parents or guardians of 

 any young gentlemen coming up for naval cadetships, or assistant 

 clerkships, recommending that previously to their educational 

 examination for these posts by the Civil Service Commissioners, 

 they should be medically examined by their own private practi- 

 tioner, and special stress is laid upon the fact that the candidate 

 would be unfit for the Service if affected with blindness, or 

 defective vision, or imperfect perception of colours. [The Witness 

 here handed in a copy of the form referred to, calling special 

 attention to paragraph 4.] The larger number of those entering 

 the Service, principally blue-jackets, stokers, and Marines, have 

 nothing of that sort submitted to them, but they are subjected to 

 a preliminary examination by a couple of Sergeants, before being 

 passed on to me as medical examiner. The preliminary, or rough 

 test, consists of the ordinary asking of questions as to bright 

 colours on card-board. I may remark that I see about 3,000 men 

 and boys a year at the Rendezvous, but there are nearly three 

 times that number who come in the building applying to enter the 

 Service, or raised by the Recruiting Sergeants; only one-third, 

 however, come to me, the rest being rejected for some cause or 

 other. With regard to the men — stokers, Marines, servants, and 

 dockyard apprentices — I simply use the ordinary colour test. 

 [Test board handed in.] Each person in succession has to cover 

 one eye, and then a colour is pointed out, and he is asked what 

 colour it is. If there is the slightest hesitation in replying, 

 Holmgren's wools are used. That is the system which has been 

 used for many years with men and boys, and I have found, as a 

 rule, defective colour perception is hardly to be found among that 

 class of people, doubtful cases being in nearly every instance due 

 to colour ignorance, and appears to be confined to men and 

 boys raised in the country recruiting centres of England and 

 Scotland. In many instances these persons will confuse the 

 brighter colours, yellows and blues ; they understand green, but 

 frequently, especially with boys raised in the Eastern Counties, 

 where they are recruited from agricultural labourers, they cannot 

 detect some .of the test greens, although they will at once 

 recognise grass-green with Holmgren's wools. I am speak- 

 ing of boys from the country as contrasted with those raised in 

 London or twenty miles round, of whom a large number come to 

 us every day. 



