Inquiries into human faculty and its development / Sir Francis Galton.

  • Francis Galton
Date:
1907
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Inquiries into human faculty and its development / Sir Francis Galton. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    various colours of hair are found among our professional classes. Albino Very fair Fair Light brown Brown Dark brown Black brown Black Red brown—dark red Red Golden—light red I take the professional classes because they correspond with the class of English worthies better than any of the others from which returns have been collected. The Diagram, however, gives a fair representation of other classes of the community. For instance, I have analysed the official records of the very carefully-selected crews of H.M.S. Alert and Discovery in the Arctic Expedition of 1875-6, and find the proportion of various shades of hair to be the same among them as is shown in the Diagram. Seven-tenths of the crews had complexions described as light, fair, fresh, ruddy or freckled, and the same proportion had blue or gray eyes. They would have contrasted strongly with Cromwell’s regiment of Ironsides, who were recruited from the dark¬ haired men of the fen districts, and who are said to have left the impression on contemporary observers as being men of a peculiar breed. They would also probably have con¬ trasted with any body of thoroughgoing Puritan soldiers taken at haphazard; for there is a prevalence of dark hair among men of atrabilious and sour temperament. If we may believe caricaturists, the fleshiness and obesity of many English men and women in the earlier years of this century must have been prodigious. It testifies to the grosser conditions of life in those days, and makes it improbable that the types best adapted to prevail then would be the best adapted to prevail now.
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