288 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 



brown), Charles XII. of Sweden (dark brown), Captain Cook (dark 

 brown), Cromwell, Defoe (dark brown), Longfellow, Farragut (becom- 

 ing in middle life almost black), Dean Farrar (dark brown), Eugene 

 Field (cross between brown and dove color!), Gladstone (brown, later 

 black), Gordon, TJ. S. Grant (reddish brown, though another authority 

 says chestnut brown), Keats (gold brown), Sidney Lanier (light 

 brown), Napoleon (dark brown), Washington Irving (chestnut), John 

 Milton (light brown), Peter the Great (ruddy brown), George Ripley, 

 Robespierre, John Euskin, Shelley, Southey, Charles Sumner (nut 

 brown), Bayard Taylor (dark brown), Thoreau, General Thomas (light 

 brown), George Washington (light brown) though another authority 

 says dark brown), N. P. Willis (light brown). 



j The remainder of the names in our list, aside from the case of 

 Thackeray, whose hair is described sometimes as " white " and some- 

 times as " flaxen," we have classed as " reddish." The hair of Bunyan 

 is so described, that of Andrew Jackson is described as " reddish sandy," 

 that of James Russell Lowell as " ruddy " or " auburn," that of Swin- 

 burne as " red " in his youth, though the information in this last case 

 comes from a passing reference in a magazine article and not from an 

 authoritative biography. William the Silent is described as having 

 auburn hair and Savanarola as having reddish eyelashes, while Thomas 

 Hobbes is referred to as having yellowish-reddish whiskers. It will be 

 remembered that in an earlier portion of this paper the hair of U. S. 

 Grant is given as reddish-brown and that of Peter the Great as ruddy- 

 brown. The case of Swinburne is thus the single instance of red hair 

 in our lists if our information as to that individual is authentic. As to 

 Hobbes it is important to note that the color given refers only to the 

 beard which, under the law we have mentioned, must have been lighter 

 in color than the head hair, and it is not improbable therefore that the 

 hair of Hobbes was dark. 



The absence of yellow from our lists is highly important, seeing 

 that flaxen is the leading hair color of the northern races of Europe. 

 The hair of Sir Thomas More, as we have seen, was " black shot with 

 yellow," and as to R. L. Stevenson it is said " his hair, from being light, 

 almost yellow, became after twenty-five dark but not black." The hair 

 of Thackeray, as already mentioned, is spoken of sometimes as " white " 

 and sometimes as " flaxen." These aside, however, we are without the 

 name of a single individual whose hair is described unqualifiedly as 

 " yellow," unless the case of Thackeray be taken as such. 



More interesting, however, than the detail of color is the structure of 

 the hair among men of genius. Upon this phase of the subject our 

 data lend marked sanction to a popular fancy mentioned in an early 

 paragraph of this paper. The "poet's ringlets" seem to represent a 

 distinct fact in biography. Of the sixty individuals whose hair is 

 described in our data the structure of the hair is given as to twenty-six, 



