140 NATURAL INHERITANCE. [CHAP. 



Stature, and shown that they were fairly trustworthy. 

 I think they are somewhat more accurate in respect to 

 Eye-colour, upon which family portraits have often 

 furnished direct information, while indirect information 

 has been in other cases obtained from locks of hair that 

 were preserved in the family as mementos. 



Persistence of Eye-colour in the Population. The 

 first subject of our inquiry must be into the existence of 

 any slow change in the statistics of Eye-colour in the 

 English population, or rather in that particular part of 

 it to which my returns apply, that ought to be taken 

 into account before drawing hereditary conclusions. 

 For this purpose I sorted the data, not according to the 

 year of birth, but according to generations, as that 

 method best accorded with the particular form in w r hich 

 all my E.F.F. data are compiled. Those persons who 

 ranked in the Family Records as the " children " of the 

 pedigree, were counted as generation I. ; their parents, 

 uncles and aunts, as generation II. ; their grandparents, 

 great uncles, and great aunts, as generation III. ; their 

 great grandparents, and so forth, as generation IV. No 

 account was taken of the year of birth of the " children," 

 except to learn their age ; consequently there is much 

 overlapping of dates in successive generations. We 

 may however safely say, that the persons in generation 

 I. belong to quite a different period to those in genera- 

 tion III., and the persons in II. to those in IV. I had 

 intended to exclude all children under the age of eight 

 years, but in this particular branch of the inquiry, I 



