Concern ing Eyes. \ 9 7 



have I been gratified by the sight of emerald eyes. 

 I have seen eyes called green, that is, eyes with a 

 greenish tinge or light in them, but they were not 

 the eyes I sought. One can easily forgive the poets 

 their misleading descriptions, since they are not 

 trustworthy guides, and very often, like Humpty 

 Dumpty in Through the Looking Glass, make 

 words do " extra work." For sober fact one is 

 accustomed to look to men of science ; yet, strange 

 to say, while these complain that we the unscien- 

 tific ones are without any settled and correct ideas 

 about the colour of our own eyes, they have 

 endorsed the poet's fable, and have even taken 

 considerable pains to persuade the world of its 

 truth. Dr. Paul Broca is their greatest authority. 

 In his Manual for Anthropologists he divides 

 human eyes into four distinct types -orange, green, 

 blue, grey ; and these four again into five varieties 

 each. The symmetry of such a classification sug- 

 gests at once that it is an arbitrary one. Why 

 orange, for instance ? Light hazel, clay colour, red, 

 dull brown, cannot properly be called orange ; but the 

 division requires the five supposed varieties of the 

 dark pigmented eye to be grouped under one name, 

 and because there is yellow pigment in some dark 

 eyes they are all called orange. Again, to make the 

 five grey varieties the lightest grey is made so very 

 light that only when placed on a sheet of white 

 paper does it show grey at all ; but there is always 

 some colour in the human skin, so that Broca's 

 eye would appear absolutely white by contrast a 



