On a Supposed Solution of the “Four-Colour Problems”

Extract

It appears from the recently published life of Archbishop Temple that he is supposed to have found a proof of the proposition that any map can be coloured with four colours, no two adjacent segments of it being coloured alike. The writer had heard of this before the publication of the Life, but had not succeeded in finding what the proof was, and was under the impression that it had never been published, especially as it was not mentioned in Mr. Rouse Ball’s book. As stated in the Life the supposed solution was published in the Journal of Education, June 1, 1889. It turns out to be what one has learned from experience (and the writer owns that he has spent much time on the subject) to expect from any theory which looks like a short solution of this extremely elusive problem.