Febbtjaey 4, 1910] 



SCIENCE 



lib 



that this is a cause of inferiority rather 

 than the reverse, because the savage is thus 

 led to rely wholly on his keen senses, and 

 to devote his whole attention to sense im- 

 pressions, to the neglect and atrophy of his 

 intellectual powers. Ranke, hoAvever, on 

 testing natives of Brazil, a race notable for 

 its feats of vision, found that their ability 

 to discern the position of a letter or similar 

 character at a distance, though good, was 

 not remarkable, but fell within the range 

 of European powers. The steppe-dwelling 

 Kahnuks, also renowned for distant vision, 

 being able to detect the dust of a herd of 

 cattle at a greater distance with the naked 

 eye than a European could with a telescope, 

 have also been examined; and their acuity 

 was indeed found to be very high, aver- 

 aging considerably above that of Euro- 

 peans ; yet only one or two out of the forty 

 individuals tested exceeded the European 

 record, while the great majority fell within 

 the range of good European eyes. Much 

 the same result has been obtained from 

 Arabs, Egyptians and quite a variety of 

 peoples. Among the most reliable results 

 are those of Rivers on a wholly unselected 

 Papuan population. He found no very 

 exceptional individual among 115 tested, 

 yet the average was somewhat better than 

 that of Europeans. I had myself, through 

 the kindness of Dr. McGee, the opportunity 

 of testing individuals from quite a variety 

 of races at the St. Louis Fair in 1904, and 

 my results agree closely with those already 

 cited, though I did not find any cases of 

 very exceptional powers among about 300 

 individuals. There were a number who 

 exceeded the best of the 200 whites whom 

 I also tested under the same conditions, 

 but none who exceeded or equaled the 

 record of a few individuals who have been 

 found in the German army. Indians and 

 Filipinos ranked highest, averaging about 

 10 per cent, better than whites, when all 



individuals of really defective vision were 

 excluded. The amount of overlapping is 

 indicated by stating that 65-75 per cent, 

 of Indians and Filipinos exceeded the aver- 

 age for whites. It did not seem possible, 

 however, to assert anything like a corre- 

 spondence between eyesight and the degree 

 of primitiveness or backwardness of a 

 people ; since, for instance, the Negritos of 

 the Philippine Islands, though much more 

 primitive than the Malayan Filipinos in 

 their mode of life, and, indeed, the most 

 primitive group so far tested, were inferior 

 to the Filipinos, and, in fact, as far as 

 could be judged from the small number 

 examined, no whit superior to whites. Nor 

 does it seem possible, from results hitherto 

 reported, to believe in a close correspond- 

 ence between keen sight and dark skin, 

 though it is true that pigment is important 

 in several ways to the eye, and that there- 

 fore, as Rivers has suggested, the amount 

 of pigmentation might be a factor in vision. 

 But it does not seem to be specially the 

 darkest races that show the keenest vision. 

 We may perhaps conclude that eyesight is 

 a function which varies somewhat in effi- 

 ciency with difference of race, though with 

 much overlapping. No doubt, however, the 

 results as they stand need some qualifica- 

 tion. On the one hand, inclusion of individ- 

 uals with myopia and similar defects would 

 lower the average of Europeans consider- 

 ably more than that of most other races; 

 so that the actual condition of eyesight dif- 

 fers more than the results show. On the 

 other hand, it would not be fair to include 

 near-sighted individuals, if what we wish 

 to discover is native differences between 

 peoples; for the different prevalence of 

 myopia is certainly due to the differing 

 uses to which the eye is put. And this 

 matter of use may have considerable influ- 

 ence on the individuals not classed as near- 

 sighted, and so admitted to the comparison. 



