Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 26.djvu/454

438 between 21 and 30, we who are not color-blind could form a clear conception of its appearance to color-blind persons, and appreciate how impossible it must be for them to conceal their defects under the investigation of the color-stick. Rose, being composed of red and blue in equal quantities, appears as a tint of blue to the red-blind, and green must look to them gray.

It has not been the duty of the writer to investigate cases of accident which might have been caused by defects of sight, but he has been assured by officials that a solution will hereafter be found in them for those hitherto insoluble mysteries where men, otherwise credible, have so flatly contradicted themselves and the circumstances of the case. By one prominent officer he was told that, being upon a train at night, delayed by some slight accident, he himself took a red lantern, and, going a proper distance back, placed himself on the track in the way of an on-coming train, but, finding his light not observed he was compelled to dash it into the cab to attract the engineer's attention, and arrest him in his progress to a collision. Upon the examination of another engineer, his superior officer being present and convinced of his marked color-blindness remarked that, but a short time before, the man had run into the rear of a train properly protected by a red light in the hands of a brakeman some distance in the rear, that the most careful investigation had resulted only in the suspension of the brakeman for not having gone far enough back, but that he was now satisfied that the color-blindness of the engineer had been the real cause of the accident. Some slight or minor accidents recently led to the discovery that another engineer had by some oversight not been tested in his division, and this led to his examination and detection there, and to his conviction by the writer as a color-blind. Still another case now presents itself. An engineer some time ago ran over and killed a brakeman, holding a danger-signal on the track in front of his engine, and no satisfactory explanation could then be given; but the division examiner predicted that he would probably be found colorblind, and on his examination this proved to be the case.

As a fact it may be safely assumed, in the various emergencies of a railway service, by day and by night, the year round, that, if an accident could occur from such and such contingencies, it will be but a matter of time when it will become a verity.

In a recent popular article on "Control of Vision," Dr. Jeffries, who has done more than any one in this country to call attention to its necessity, laments the entire failure in Connecticut, and the partial failure in Massachusetts, to obtain efficient legislation to compel railroads to expel their deficient men. He tells us of the like condition of things in England; and finally adds that the Pennsylvania Railway alone has availed itself of scientific advice. Perhaps if the system adopted by it had then been described and urged as most in keeping with our institutions, we might hope to see all the roads in