1885.] 
The Inter-Relations of the Senses. 289 
^ A French journal, “ L’Intermediare des Chercheurs et des 
Curieux” for June 25th and September 25th of last year, 
gives an instance of two ladies who ascribed colours to 
sounds, but differed in almost every particular. 
On looking over these details we find complication and 
contradiction. If a physicist had been asked as to a probable 
connection between sounds and colours he would probably 
have suggested that each note of the gamut would correspond 
to one of the speCtral colours, whilst noise, as distinct from 
sound, would suggest browns, olives, blacks, and other im- 
pure colours. But of such a regularity we find nothing. 
The chromatic sensations called up by any sound seem to be 
influenced — 
a. By the speciality of the instrument producing such 
sound. 
b. By its pitch, as high or low. 
c. By its place in the gamut, according, at least, to M. 
Pedrono’s subjeCt. 
We have thus at least three distinct factors, and even if 
all the subjects agreed in their indications we should have 
no little difficulty in reducing the phenomena under any 
regular law. 
The most important question is whether we have to do 
here with a capricious idiosyncracy which may take different 
forms in different persons, or with a reversion to an ancestral 
stage in which the senses of hearing and sight were less 
sharply differentiated than at present. 
The persons who experience these chromatic impressions 
should be more exhaustively examined. Above all inquiries 
are needed on the possible occurrence of the converse case, 
— the suggestion of sounds by colours, as well on the possible 
suggestion of sounds and colours by odours and flavours, or 
reciprocally. 
