Race distribution in Scotland / by John Brownlee.

  • John Brownlee
Date:
[1912?]
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: Race distribution in Scotland / by John Brownlee. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The University of Glasgow Library. The original may be consulted at The University of Glasgow Library.

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    RACE DISTRIBUTION IN SCOTLAND. By John Brownlee, M.D. [Read 5th March, 1912.] The analysis of a population into its original sources has not hitherto been attempted on any definite principle. The usual method has been to count the number of persons with each colour of hair and to tabulate the percentage of brunet- ness or darkness, but such a method lies open to the grave defect that no account is taken of the effect produced when mating of different races occurs. Thus if an individual with black hair marry one with fair hair all the immediate offspring will be dark haired. If a colony of such further inter-marry one out of every four will be fair haired. To say then that the races consist of a mixture in the proportion of three dark haired persons to one fair is obviously a mis-statement. When we start to analyse the Scottish race we have several things to remember. First, the only survey of the adult Scottish race as regards pigmentation is that made by Dr Beddoe in the years 1870-1885, so that the figures only relate to what existed at that period. Selection, Emigration and Migration have been going on for centuries, and although nearly all Dr Eeddoe’s figures show that in the country dis- tricts essentially stable populations exist, it must be remem- bered that these districts have been recruited more or less from outside for many centuries. Secondly, that at present the information regarding the kind of blending which takes ' place when persons of different hair mate is not completely known, but can only be surmised from a study of Dr Beddoe’s figures, and that these are not recorded in a manner to give more than a limited amount of information. The method in which migration takes place has probably always been essentially the same, and between different dis-