Mr Rivers , The colour vision of the Eskimo. 
143 
The colour vision of the Eskimo. By W. H. R. Rivers, M.A., 
St John’s College. 
[ Received 9 March 1901.] 
The observations described in this paper were made on the 
same party of Labrador Eskimo of whom Mr Duckworth and 
Mr Pain have already given an account in the Proceedings of this 
Society 1 . I am indebted to Mr Taber for his permission to 
examine these people. 
A few previous observations have been recorded. 
Bessels 2 obtained the names of coloured papers from sixteen 
individuals belonging to Smith Sound. All could distinguish red, 
blue, yellow, green, black and white, but had no names for 
gradations of intensity. The same name was given to both brown 
and blue, and Bessels believed that these people were unable to 
distinguish the two colours. 
In 1880 Virchow 3 obtained the names of colours from five 
Eskimo from Labrador. He gives the names for the chief colours 
and notes that difficulties only occurred in the cases of orange and 
yellow on the one hand, and violet and brown on the other. 
Holmgren 4 records that Almquist, a member of the Vega 
expedition, examined 125 Eskimo in Port Clarence in Behring 
Straits, and found only one to be colour-blind. 
I have also consulted Erdmann’s Eskimo dictionary 5 , which is 
based on the work of missionaries in Labrador, and the compara- 
tive vocabulary drawn up by Rink 6 . 
I examined eighteen individuals (ten males and eight females) 
with Holmgren’s wools. All understood the method quite readily 
and none were colour-blind. Nearly all put red and pink wools 
together but, as the names given later to the colours showed, they 
evidently distinguished the two colours well. Blue and green 
1 Proc. Gamb. Phil. Soc., vol. x., p. 286, 1900. 
2 Arch. f. Anthropol. , vol. vm., 1875, p. 107. 
3 Verhandl. d. Berlin. Gesellsch. f. Anthropol., 1880, p. 266, 
4 Upsala Ldkareforenings fbrhandlinger, vol. xv., 1880, p. 222. 
5 Eskimoisches Worterbuch, by F. Erdmann, Budissin, 1864. 
6 The Eskimo Tribes, by H. Rink, Copenhagen and London, 1887. 
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