way in which men and children – the latter
very pot-bellied, and without any clothing
– stare in at the windows; without
counting the cripples and idiots, of whom
there are generally two or three, who hop
about and whine for pice. They are disgusting
exhibitions, and may be advantageously,
bought off.

But of late a new feature has introduced
itself into travelling in the north-western
provinces; turnpikes – an innovation which
has excited the greatest disgust. Very
different are these from the jovial pike of
the British highway. There is a bar
stretching across the road, and a big bungalow
on one side. Here the toll-keeper may
be generally seen seated at a table in the
verandah, with his books, and all the official
et ceteras about him. Sometimes he is a
native; but if a European, he is sure to have
a very large family, as the holders of all
small appointments in India have. His is,
perhaps, the only house for miles and miles
round, and a lonely life it must be for him.
In England, turnpike-men are said to be
misanthropical; in India, they are sad, by
way of distinction, and generally wish you
good morning, or good evening, with a
resigned air, and always look as if they wished
they were going on with you. In the mean
time, the traveller proceeds on his way,
considering himself very hardly used because he
is made to pay a shilling, and must pass
another night or two on the road, before he
can be once more among his friends.

Let me hope that in a few years longer,
railroads in India will render this description
a curiosity, and that they will convert it
into history.

COLOURS AND EYES.

IN the eighth volume of this journal, and
the one hundred and nineteenth number, we
gave a sketch of what was then known upon
the subject of colour-blindness, or, as it is still
called frequently, after the most distinguished
subject of this curious state of deprivation –
Daltonism; John Dalton having been, like
M. Sismondi, and Professor Dugald Stewart,
unable to distinguish between colours. Dr.
George Wilson, who was our principal authority
for what was before said, has diligently
prosecuted his researches, and as the defect,
however seldom noticed, is to an astonishing
degree prevalent, Dr. Wilson, who has had
the field of research in this country almost to
himself, has been able to accumulate and
publish a great deal of fresh information.*

* Researches on Colour-Blindness. Edinburgh,
Sutherland and Kuox.

For our own parts, we certainly were not
prepared to learn (and the more inquiry is
extended, the more certain it seems to
become) that among males the proportion of
persons who are, in some degree, wrong as
to their perceptions of colour, is not less than
one in twenty, and that colour-blindness of a
striking character – such as a liability to
mistake red for green, brown, or black –
occurs, on an average, in one person out of
every fifty. This refers only to males. In
women the sense of colour is more fully
cultivated, and any defect of it, when it occurs,
is much more carefully concealed than among
men. Very few women are known to be
colour-blind, and it is probable that they are
all, in a much less degree than men, subject
to the infirmity in question. We may here
say, that in our former summary of the
subject, the reverse was stated, by an error of
the pen, the correction of which was perhaps
sufficiently supplied by the character of the
succeeding sentence.

All classes appear to be pretty equally
subject to this curious infirmity. Of a
hundred gentlemen sitting together in the House
of Lords, or of a hundred members of a
mechanics' benefit society sitting together at
their inn, it is equally likely that two are
colour-blind enough to match a red coat with
green trousers under the belief that they are
purchasing a suit of sober black or drab, and
that three more if they were asked to match
a few delicate shades of worsted for their
wives or sisters would startle them by their
odd notions of a match. In every large
congregation it is almost certain that there are a
few men liable to make the mistake into
which a colour-blind nobleman once fell,
who, meeting a lady of his familiar acquaintance
dressed in green silk, asked, with much
concern, for whom she was in mourning. In
the same assembly there would probably
be dozens who would be much puzzled to
see the difference between pink and pale
blue, these being colours confounded
frequently by persons otherwise not subject to
confusion.

In the more marked cases of colour-blindness,
sometimes the majority of colours are
distinctly appreciated, but there are at least
two, as red and green, or generally four, as
red, green, olive, and brown, that are not
distinguished from each other. Of the three
primary colours, yellow is the one which
least frequently escapes perception. Most
colour-blind persons see it perfectly. A pure
blue, well illuminated, is in the next degree
least likely to pass unperceived; some colour-
blind persons pronounce it to be the colour of
which they have the most vivid perception.
On the other hand, combine yellow and blue
into green, and you have the greatest of all
stumbling-blocks. Green is, by the colour-
blind, mistaken commonly for red, often,
though not so commonly, for blue, and now
and then for yellow. Of the three primary
colours red is the distracting one. The
colour-blind identify it very frequently with
green, sometimes with perfect black. The
red in purple not being perceived, that colour
counts with them as blue. The red in orange
being undetected, that colour counts with