Simultaneously with the first publication of this essay in _Macmillan’s Magazine_, there appeared in the _Nineteenth Century_ an article by Mr. Gladstone on the Colour-sense, chiefly as exhibited in the poems of Homer. He shows that the few colour-terms used by Homer are applied to such different objects that they cannot denote colours only, as we perceive and differentiate them; but seem more applicable to different intensities of light and shade. Thus, to give one example, the word _porphureos_ is applied to clothing, to the rainbow, to blood, to a cloud, to the sea, and to death; and no one meaning will suit all these applications except comparative darkness. In other cases the same thing has many different epithets applied to it according to its different aspects or conditions; and as the colours of objects are generally indicated in ancient writings by comparative rather than by abstract terms,--as wine-colour, fire-colour, bronze-colour, &c.--it becomes still more difficult to determine in any particular case what colour was really meant. Mr. Gladstone’s general conclusion is, that the archaic man had a positive perception only of degrees of light and darkness, and that in Homer’s time he had advanced to the imperfect discrimination of red and yellow, but no further; the green of grass and foliage or the blue of the sky being never once referred to. These curious facts cannot, however, be held to prove so recent an origin for colour-sensations as they would at first sight appear to do, because we have seen that both flowers and fruits have become diversely coloured in adaptation to the visual powers of insects, birds, and mammals. Red, being a very common colour of ripe fruits which attract birds to devour them and thus distribute their seeds, we may be sure that the contrast of red and green is to them very well marked. It is indeed just possible that birds may have a more advanced development of the colour-sense than mammals, because the teeth of the latter commonly grind up and destroy the seeds of the larger fruits and nuts which they devour, and which are not usually coloured; but the irritating effect of bright colours on some of them does not support this view. It seems most probable therefore that man’s _perception_ of colour in the time of Homer was little if any inferior to what it is now, but that, owing to a variety of causes, no precise _nomenclature_ of colours had become established. One of these causes probably was, that the colours of the objects of most importance, and those which were most frequently referred to in songs and poems, were uncertain and subject to variation. Blood was light or dark red, or when dry, blackish; iron was grey or dark or rusty; bronze was shining or dull; foliage was of all shades of yellow, green, or brown; and horses or cattle had no one distinctive colour. Other objects, as the sea, the sky, and wine, changed in tint according to the light, the time of day, and the mode