74 



THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



only a minority of mankind have their noses right in the middle of 

 their faces ; and most of us have our noses very much out of place 

 without suspecting it. 



But the eyes ! Surely, those windows of the soul, can never be 

 charged with asymmetry ! I used to think Nature had too correct an 

 aesthetic sense to do such a thing as that. But I know two persons, 

 one of whom, a man, has one eye brown and one blue ; the other of 

 them, a woman, has one eye blue and one black her hair being brown. 

 In such a state of things, all we can say is, that the blending of the two 

 parents is under some conditions not perfect. Strictly speaking, this 

 too is the case where southron and northern, with black hair and blue 

 eyes, or with light hair and black eyes, are still in antagonism, and 

 where consequently the Darwinian force of inheritance is not yet fully 

 established in other words, where a new race is not yet formed. 

 And, in the face of these facts, what are we to think of the eye as the 

 "mirror of the soul?" Here one eye flashes and threatens, and the 

 other is as mild as the German spring-time, the while only one heart 

 beats and throbs in the bosom. Nay, the heart itself is not always in 

 its own place ; it sometimes occupies the right side of the chest. But 

 it is of the eyes I was speaking, and not of the heart. I do not pro- 

 pose to discuss the whole question of the color of the eyes, down to 

 albinism ; I would simply observe that, as seen through them, the 

 world wears a very different aspect for different individuals a cir- 

 cumstance which, however, has nothing to do with asymmetry. Some 

 eyes see only complementary colors, e. g., red instead of green ; others 

 see no color at all, every thing appearing to them like a copperplate 

 engraving. 



But color, too, has its caprices, as shown in the hair. I once asked 

 an acquaintance why he did not allow his mustache to grow. His 

 reply was, because on one side it was light brown, and on the other 

 white ; and he bade me look at his eyebrows, where I would find at 

 least a partial confirmation of what he said. In fact, my friend had 

 not stated the whole truth, for the dualism was faintly discernible even 

 in the hair of his head. When a boy, I knew a whole family, the 

 young members of which had each on the poll one or two locks of 

 white hair. It was but yesterday I discovered, among my Christian 

 neighbors, a descendant of Abraham, having black, curly hair, but 

 blue eyes, and light eyebrows and mustache the latter being as be- 

 coming to its handsome wearer as if his hair had been brown. Clearly 

 a reversion from Western race-mixture to the Oriental type ! I am con- 

 fident that similar anomalies might often be noted if the attention 

 were directed to them. 



There are many other facial anomalies, which fail to attract atten- 

 tion, because we have grown accustomed to them. We should expect 

 the convex cast of one side of the face to fit, line for line, into the con- 

 cave cast of the other ; but it is doubtful if there is to be anywhere 



