1 88 Idle Days in Patagonia. 



Europe, having been, until recent times, almost or 

 quite universal. The blue eye does not seem to 

 have any advantage for man in a state of nature, 

 being mild where fierceness of expression is re- 

 quired ; it is almost unknown amongst the inferior 

 creatures ; and only on the supposition that the 

 appearance of the eye is less important to man's 

 welfare than it is to that of other species, can we 

 account for its survival in a branch of the human 

 race. 



Cerulean eyes ; locks comparable in hue to the 

 "yellow hair that floats on the eastern clouds," and 

 a Avhite body, like snow with a blush on it — what 

 could Nature have been dreaming of when she gave 

 such things to her rudest most savage humans ! 

 That they should have overcome dark-eyed i^aces, 

 and trod on their necks and ruined their works, 

 strikes one as unnatural, and reads like a fable. 



Little, however, as the human eye has changed, 

 assuming it to have been dark originally, there is a 

 great deal of spontaneous variation in individuals, 

 light hazel and blue-grey being apparently the most 

 variable. I have found curiously marked and 

 spotted eyes not uncommon ; in some instances the 

 spots being so black, round, and large as to produce 

 the appearance of eyes with clusters of pupils on 

 them. I have known one j^erson with large bi'ovvu 

 spots on light blue-grey eyes, whose children all 

 inherited the peculiarity ; also another with reddish 

 hazel irides thickly marked with fine characters 

 resembling Greek letters. This person was an 



