1886.] 



Family Likeness in Eye-colour. 



407 



ing to the colour that happens most to arrest the attention of the 

 observer. For brevity, I will henceforth call all intermediate tints by 

 the one name of hazel. 



I will now investigate the history of those hazel eyes that are varia- 

 tions from light or from dark respectively, or that are blends between 

 them. It is reasonable to suppose that the residue which were in- 

 herited from hazel-eyed parents arose originally either as variations 

 or as blends, and therefore the result of the investigation will enable 

 us to assort the small but troublesome group of hazel eyes in an equit- 

 able proportion between light and dark, and thus to simplify our 

 inquiry. 



The family records include 168 families of brothers and sisters, 

 counting only those who were above eight years of age, in whom one 

 member at least had hazel eyes. The total number of these brothers 

 and sisters is 948, of whom 302 or about one- third have hazel eyes. 

 For distinction I will describe these as " hazel-eyed families " ; not 

 meaning thereby that all the children have that peculiarity, but only 

 some of them. The eye-colours of all the 336 parents are given in the 

 records, but only those of 449 of the grandparents, whose number 

 would be 672, were it not for a few cases of cousin marriages. Thus 

 I have information concerning about only two-thirds of the grand- 

 parents, but this will suffice for our purpose. The results are given 

 in Table II. - 



Table II. — The Descent of Hazel-eyed Families. 





Total 

 cases. 



Observed. 



Percentages. 



Light. 



Hazel. 



Dark. 



Light. 



Hazel. 



Dark. 



G-eneral population . . 



4490 



2746 



569 



1175 



61-2 



12-7 



26*1 



Ill, Grandparents . . 



449 



267 



61 



121 



60 



13 



27 





336 



165 



85 



86 



49 



25 



26 



I, Children 







948 



430 



302 



216 



45 



32 



23 



It will be observed that the distribution of eye-colour among the 

 grandparents of the hazel-eyed families is nearly identical with that 

 among the population at large. But among the parents there is a 

 notable difference ; they have a decidedly smaller percentage of light 

 eye-colour and a slightly smaller proportion of dark, while the hazel 

 element is nearly doubled. A similar change is superadded in the 

 next generation. The total result in passing from generation III 

 to I, is that the percentage of the light eyes is diminished from 60 or 

 61 to 45, therefore by one quarter of its original amount, and that 



