H.— ANTHROPOLOGY. 



143 



following five shades of hair — Fair, Ked, Brown, Dark Brown, and Black — 

 and from these to construct an index by taking the percentage of dark 

 brown and black hair added together. 



Beddoe also records the percentage of light, dark, and intermediate 

 eyes ; and to me the simplest index seems to be gained by adding half 

 the number of the intermediate eyes to the light and half to the dark, and 

 by then taking the new percentage of dark eyes as the index of eye colora- 

 tion. This method has the additional advantage of allowing us to use 

 Fleure's records of people in Wales. In most cases it is unwise 10 use 

 the hair or eyes alone, but to combine the- two into a general index of 

 nigrescence by adding the indices of the hair and eyes together and then 

 dividing the sum by two. 



An example will make this clear. I take 158 students from St. 

 Thomas's Hospital and find that their hair and eye colours are as follows : — 



/o 



1 29-8 (Hair Index) 



Hair 



= 26-61, 



= 3-2} ' 



/o 



(Light 88+ 18-5 = 106-5 = 67-4 



Eyes - Intermed. 37< 



(Dark 33+18-5= 51-5=32-6 (Eye Index) 



-2=31-2 (Index of 



Nigrescence) 



158 



158 1000 



I admit that the personal equation of the observer comes into this, as 

 into all systems, because it is often so difficult to draw the line between 

 brown and dark brown hair ; but the difficulty may, to a large extent, 

 be overcome by having an intermediate group between the two, into 

 which all doubtful cases may go, and these may be divided equally between 

 the brown and dark groups before the percentages are worked out. 



Let us take this series of students as a sample of the upper middle- 

 class youths in London to-day. Of course they come from all over 

 England, but so do all Londoners. I have, however, been very careful 

 not to include any traceable foreigners in my list. 



Sixty years ago Beddoe observed the coloration of 500 male Londoners 

 of the upper classes, and, according to my system, their Hair Index was 

 40-5, Eye Index 31-2 ; total index, 35-8. 



Upper-class Londoners' Comparison 



Date. 

 1860-70 

 1920-27 



Number. 

 500 

 158 



