SELECTION IX MAX. 169 



per cent, of women with blue or grey eyes. Now there 

 are 44 per cent, of brown eyes among the women of French- 

 Switzerland, so that it seems as though the brown eyes 

 were more attractive. Similarly, 167 men with blue or 

 grey eyes married 59 per cent, of brown-eyed women, 

 which is much above the proportion in the women of the 

 country. 



De Candolle ^ found that while 72 couples having both 

 dark eyes gave birth to 3*07 children on an average, 131 

 couples having both light eyes had only 272. He notes 

 that children who were under 10 years of age at the period 

 of observation were not counted ; but this fact detracts very 

 little from the value of the observation, which would lead 

 one to expect the rapid diminution of light eyes, and 

 probably also of the blond type. The number of cases, 

 though considerable, is perhaps hardly large enough to 

 support a conclusion of such magnitude. And Mr Galton, 

 on the other hand," dealino- with a much larp-er number of 

 cases, comes to the conclusion that he may "disregard the 

 current popular belief in the existence of a gradual darken- 

 ing of the British population," and regards eye-colour as 

 " statistically persistent ". Mr. Galton's method of working, 

 however, is backwards, from children to parents and grand- 

 parents, and therefore takes, I apprehend, no account of the 

 number of barren couples, which, if we could ascertain 

 it, might possibly modify this conclusion. His figures are 

 as follows (summarised) : — 



Now ]Mr. Galton, by an examination of the pedigrees 

 of neutral-eyed persons, finds that they may fairly be 

 taken as the offspring, roughly speaking, of parents of whom 

 two-thirds had light and one-third dark eyes. And if we 



"^ Revue d^ Anthropologie, p. 265, 1887. 



- Natural I7iherita7ice, cap. viii., and table xv. 



