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Ordinary Meeting, December 13th, 1881. 
J. P. Joule, D.C.L., LL.D., F.RS,, &c., in the Chair. 
“Remarks on the Terms used to denote Colour, and on 
the Colours of Faded Leaves,” by Edward Schunck, Ph.D., 
F.RS. 
At the recent meeting of the British Association held at 
York, a paper was read by Dr. Montagu Lubbock before 
the section for anatomy and physiology on “ The develop- 
ment of the colour sense,” which I had the pleasure to hear. 
The purpose of the author was to controvert the opinion of 
those who hold that the colour sense in man was not always 
what it is now, but that it has gradually been developed, 
the last stages of this development having taken place 
within historical times. It is supposed that the human eye 
was originally only capable of distinguishing black and 
white, and that the capacity of seeing the various colours of 
the spectrum arose by degrees, red being the first and blue 
the last colour to be discriminated. Mr. Gladstone, in a 
paper published not long ago, goes so far as to say that the 
ancient Greeks, having no word for blue, were blind to that 
colour, and that it is only since their day that human vision 
has been so far developed as to perceive the more refran- 
gible end of the spectrum. The author of the paper referred 
to arrived at the conclusion that there is no sufficient evi- 
dence to show that the faculty of perceiving colour has been 
acquired by man within historical times, a conclusion in 
which Sir John Lubbock, who took part in the discussion 
on the paper, entirely concurred. Whatever may have 
taken place in prehistoric times, there can be little doubi, I 
imagine, looking at the remains adorned with various colours 
in Egypt and elsewhere, that the more civilised nations of 
Proceedings— Lit. &Phil. Soc. — Vol. XXI.— No. 4. — Session 1881-2. 
