246 HAMPSHIRE DAYS 



produced a well-marked intermediate type ; and this 

 is one of my four distinct Hampshire types. I should 

 place it second in importance, although it comes a 

 very long way after the first type, which is distinctly 

 blonde. 



This first most prevalent type, which greatly out- 

 numbers all the others put together, and probably 

 includes more than half of the entire population, is 

 strongest in the north, and extends across the county 

 from Sussex to Wiltshire. The Hampshire people in 

 that district are hardly to be distinguished from those 

 of Berkshire. One can see this best by looking at 

 the school-children in a number of North Hampshire 

 and Berkshire villages. In sixty or seventy to a hun- 

 dred and fifty children in a village school you will 

 seldom find as many as a dozen with dark eyes. 



As was said in a former chapter, there is very little 

 beauty or good looks in this people ; on the other hand, 

 there is just as little downright ugliness; they are 

 mostly on a rather monotonous level, just passable in 

 form and features, but with an almost entire absence 

 of any brightness, physical or mental. Take the best- 

 looking woman of this most common type the de- 

 scription will fit a dozen in any village. She is of 

 medium height, and has a slightly oval face (which, 

 being Anglo-Saxon, she ought not to have), with fairly 

 good features ; a nose fairly straight, or slightly aquiline, 

 and not small ; mouth well moulded, but the lips too 

 thin ; chin frequently pointed. Her hair is invariably 



