ON THE RELATION OF STATURE AND WEIGHT 
TO PIGMENTATION. 
By ETHEL M. ELDERTON, Galton Eugenics Laboratory. 
It is well-known that pigmentation differs widely from race to race. Further 
stature certainly and weight probably are racial characters. We might therefore 
anticipate that in investigations of stature and weight we should find a differ- 
entiation in these characters associated with the different pigmentation classes 
within the population of any town. This would arise not only because the chief 
classes of pigmentation are supposed to have originated from separate racial types, 
but because in many large towns there are considerable foreign elements not yet 
blended with 'the native population, e.g. in England and Scotland, we find Italian, 
Irish, Jewish and even Polish groups. In many cases these non-native elements 
form a considerable percentage of the population, and if, as often happens, they 
are the poorer section, then we may discover a relation between physique and 
environment which is not causal but racial in origin. Little attention seems to 
have been paid to this point in considering, for example, the effects of overcrowding 
on the weight and stature of children. The children who dwell in four-roomed 
homes are not necessarily of the same race as those who live in one or two-roomed 
homes. In a town like Glasgow, the Irish and Italian contingents are possibly 
more likely to be in one or two-roomed homes than the native Scottish, and a 
similar state of affairs probably occurs in those London school districts which 
contain large foreign contingents. 
Before we have investigated the racial homogeneity of a population or before 
we have shown that racial differentiation does not indicate any economic differ- 
entiation, we ought not to lay much stress on the association of physique — 
measured by stature and weight — with environment. There is little doubt that 
a comparative study of native and foreign elements in our big towns, from the 
standpoints of both physique and economic condition would be of much service. 
Meanwhile it occurred to me that if an investigation were made of the relation of 
stature and weight to pigmentation a positive result would indicate the general 
importance of the problem. A negative result would show that within a homo- 
geneous population pigmentation had little or no relation to stature and weight. 
