RESEARCHES INTO ANTHRO- 

 POLOGICAL HEREDITY 



BY H ALF DAN BRYN 



DIVISIONAL SURGEON, TRONDHJEM. NORWAY 



I. ON THE INHERITANCE OF EYE COLOUR IN MAN. 



AT the 7th meeting of Norwegian country physicians in 1897 the 

 district physician, Eilert Stören ^ gave a lecture oji heredity 

 dealing particularly with the inheritance of the eye colour in man. In 

 concluding the lecture he called attention to the fact that country phy- 

 sicians have largely the opportunity to contribute weightily to the 

 solution of this problem. 



Since then the study of genetics has made great progress. From 

 our country the contributions are still very few although we are parti- 

 cularly well qualified to do productive work in this field. The types 

 of men are not nearly thus mixed with us as they are in other countries 

 of the civilized world. 



So I have thought it to be of interest to make an account of what 

 I have found on examining certain characters in man in two much 

 isolated mountain districts, Selbu and Tydalen. The characters selec- 

 ted are the eye colour, the hair colour, the width-length index of the 

 head and the height-width index of the face. The great difficulty 

 met with in this kind of investigations is the constant development of 

 many of these features throughout life. Many born with blue eyes, 

 have »mixed» eyes when 1 year old, brown eyes when 4 years old. 

 A fair-haired two years old child becomes sometimes light brown hair 

 at the age of 12, and dark brown hair at the age of 30. These circum 

 stances must of course be taken into consideration. The first account 

 aims at discussing the inheritance of eye colour in man in the two 

 districts. With eye colour I mean here only the colour of iris. It is 

 a well known fact that most people in Norway have blue eyes or 

 bluish-grey ones. In these eyes no pigment is to be found in the fore- 

 most strata of iris, and it is only in tapetum nigrum in the back part 

 of iris that the usually black pigment is to be found. 



* E. Stören: En studie over arvelighet. Tidsskrift for den norske Isegefore- 

 ning, 1898. 



