THE * MONTHLY 
JOURNAL OF SCIENCE. 
JUNE, 1879. 
I. COLOUR AND ITS RECOGNITION* 
f T is not without some reluctance that we venture to re* 
open a question which has been abundantly handled 
both by workers and dreamers, and which, though by 
no means decided or exhausted, must await further disco- 
veries for its ultimate solution. We wish, however, to lay 
before our readers certain speculations calculated to prove 
valuable and suggestive not merely to professed men of 
science, but also to the cultivated lay-public. Although 
disclaiming all right to rank as a biological specialist, Mr. 
Grant Allen, the author of the work before us, has, in our 
opinion, thrown a welcome and seasonable light upon some 
of the most obscure features of the animal and vegetable 
world. Even though certain of the conclusions to which 
he has led may not be accepted as final, they must surely 
give a new stimulus and a fresh direction to research. 
Mr. Allen’s immediate objeCt is to prove that the colour- 
sense — so far from being, as Dr. Magnus and Mr. Gladstone 
have on mere philological grounds sought to demonstrate, 
a recent development of the human mind — must have 
existed in pre-historical ages, and that it may be traced far 
down the animal series. In opposition, again, to a far more 
formidable authority, Mr. A. R. Wallace, he defends the 
theory of Sexual Selection. In the very outset of his work 
he suggests the law that “ only those animals display beau- 
tiful colours, due to Sexual Selection, in whom a taste for 
colour has already been aroused by the influence of flowers, 
fruits, or brilliant inseCts, their habitual food,” — a principle 
which we shall have to examine in some detail. He shows 
* The Colour-Sense, its Origin and Development : an Essay in Comparative 
Psychology. By Grant Allen, B.A. London : Trubner and Co. 
VOL. IX. (N.S.) 2 D 
