The Color-Sense: Its Origin and Development. An Essay on Comparative Psychology. By Grant Allen, B. A. Boston: Houghton, Osgood & Co. Pp. 282. Price, $3.50.
This is an interesting volume, on a topic that has come lately into prominence as one of the consequences of the theory of evolution. All pictorial art is of course based upon the color-sense in man, and it is an inquiry that can not fail to affect the theory of art whether this color-sense is an underived and always perfected faculty, or has grown through gradual stages to its present condition. That there has been a progress of taste capacity and art, founded upon the color-sense, is of course well known, but has the foundation itself been also developed? If it be admitted that it has, then there arises a new interest in the subject of color-sense as it exists among the inferior grades of animals. If color-sense and the color-perception are not to be taken as things unchangeable—if belonging to life they are a part of life, and are subject to the laws of life—then the question of the genesis of the color-faculty is legitimate, and it is proper to inquire what may have been the conditions of its origin. Professor Allen has entered upon this engaging study not merely with the enthusiasm inspired by its novelty and freshness, but in the genuine philosophic spirit, and well equipped with the scientific data for the investigation. The author's problem is, by what agencies, and under what reactions and conditions, the color-sense has originated in the grades of animal life. He finds it to be a faculty continuous throughout, but gradually unfolded and perfected, and he concludes that "the highest aesthetic products of humanity form only the last link in a chain whose first link began with the insect's selection of bright-hued blossoms."
Professor Allen combats the notion of Dr. Magnus, endorsed and popularized by Mr. Gladstone, that the color-perception of civilized man is a faculty of quite recent development, and that so lately as some three thousand years ago mankind was utterly incapable of distinguishing between violet, green, blue, and yellow. Rejecting this crude and ill-digested theory, the author remarks: "The few centuries which have rolled past during that interval form but a single pulse of the pendulum whose seconds make up the epochs of geological evolution. To me it appears rather that the color-sense of man is derived through his mammalian ancestry from a long line of anterior generations, and that its origin must be sought for in ages before a solitary quadrumanous animal had appeared upon the face of the earth." This book is an outgrowth of those studies which led the author to prepare his little volume on "Physiological Æsthetics"; but while that work was based upon human psychology, the last one relates rather to comparative psychology, or to the phenomena of mind throughout the whole animal world.
Relation of Physical Exercise to Consumption, 16 pages; and Foul-Air-Consumption, 13 pages. By R. B. Davy, M. D. Reprinted from the "Cincinnati Lancet and Observer."
In the first of these pamphlets the author discusses the influence of muscular exercise on the more important organs of the body, and on the system in general, as affecting predispositions to pulmonary complaints, and as a means for the relief of such complaints when they have once obtained a foothold in the organism. Whether employed as a preventive or a remedy, he regards properly regulated exercise as an agent of the highest value; and among the several varieties described considers rowing as probably the best, and the health-lift as perhaps the worst, that can be adopted.
The second pamphlet is devoted to the subject of foul air as a cause of consumption, and explains how man by his habits of life and the conditions with which he surrounds himself becomes the source as well as the victim of the poison.
F. H.
The Native Flowers and Ferns of the United States. By Thomas Meehan. Illustrated by Chromolithographs. Numbers from 12 to 24. Boston: L. Prang & Co. 50 cts. per No.
Volume II. of this elegant work is now complete, containing forty-eight neatly executed chromolithographs of our most interesting plants and flowers. The character of the work, text and illustrations alike, has been not only sustained but improved.
