PAPERS 
FROM 
E. C. GENET, ESQ. 
Member of the National Institute of France, of the Royal Antiquarian 
Society of London, of the Literary Academies of Sweden, of the 
Mineralogical Society of New-York, and onp of the Counsellors of 
the Society for the Promotion of Useful Arts. 
COMMUNICATED IN 1810. 
--*MB»ooo<^ooo n— i . , 
[No. 1.] 
Remarks and Motes on Colours, 
> 000 ^ 000 '. 
Colours are to the eye what sounds are to the ear, fla¬ 
vor to the taste, odour to the smell, and forms to the touch. 
A parallel might be drawn between those several feelings, 
and many curious experiments have been made in order to 
convey to our interior perception, that idea which comes the 
nearest to the one which a native deficiency of organization 
prevents being conducted and depicted in that mysterious 
camera obscura. The following anecdote corroborates this 
observation.—When the Emperor of Germany, Joseph the 
Second, visited France under the reign of Lewis the XVI. 
he viewed with peculiar attention the celebrated school of 
the Abbe De L’Epee for persons born deaf and dumb, and 
wishing to know what idea men deprived of hearing from 
their birth could have of sounds, he wrote himself the follow¬ 
ing question, which was presented to the most intelligent 
scholar. “ What is your conception of the sound of a trum¬ 
pet and of a flute V* and the immediate answer was, “ I im- 
