206 FISH BERG 



Yakowenko ' found J^y percent of Jewesses with dark eyes and 

 only 69 percent of Jews. Of Talko-Hryncewicz's 799 Jewesses 

 61.8 percent had dark eyes ; of his 869 Jews only 56.5 percent 

 had dark eyes.- The same has been observed by Weissenberg,* 

 who found 75.6 percent of dark eyes in Jewesses and only 64.8 

 percent in Jews. From Elkind's investigations among the 

 Polish Jews ^ it appears that the percentage of dark eyes is 

 about the same in both sexes. 



Considering that the color of the hair and eyes is quite a 

 stable trait, and only little, if at all, influenced by external con- 

 ditions, it is of interest to investigate the proportion of fair and 

 dark hair and eyes of the Jews grouped according to the country 

 of their birth. If the proportion of fair-haired Jews is larger in 

 countries where the non-Jewish population is blond, and the 

 reverse, this may give us a clue as to the origin of the fair- 

 haired Jews. In Table XLIV is given the percentage of Jews 

 with a given tinge of the hair and eyes among the immi- 

 grants in New York City. It will be seen that the proportions 

 do not materially differ from those found among the total 

 number of 2,272 individuals considered above, Especially if it is 

 noted that the number of observations in each group is compara- 

 tively small. 



The observations made that immigrants are of fairer com- 

 plexion than people of the same stock who remain at home do 

 not hold good among all Jewish immigrants. Thus, from Table 

 XLV we see that among the Galician Jews only 15.41 percent 

 of the immigrants have fair hair, as against 21.50 percent among 

 the Jews in GaHcia ; and among the Jews who came to the 

 United States from Lithuania and White Russia the same is 

 true: 17.83 percent had fair hair in their native home, while 

 only 9.82 percent of the immigrants from this region had fair 

 hair. Of the immigrant Jews from Poland and Little-Russia the 

 same conditions are seen to be true. The Polish Jews alone 

 show a larger percentage of fair-haired individuals among the 



^ Loc. cif., p. 158. 



2 Loc. cit. , pp. 24-26. 



3 Loc. cit., p. 108. 

 * Loc. cit., p. 52. 



