Final report of the Anthropometric Committee / F. Galton, Chairman.

Date:: [1883]

Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Final report of the Anthropometric Committee / F. Galton, Chairman. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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42. As an example of high physical qualities as developed by training, the measurements of eighty-nine professional and amateur athletes are given. Their average stature exceeds that of the general population from which they are drawn by 0*68 inch, while their average weight falls short of that standard by 14*5 lbs. The ratio of weight to stature is, in the athletes, 2T00 lbs., and in the general population 2*323 lbs., for each inch of stature. Thus, a trained athlete whose stature is 5 feet 7 inches should weigh 10 stones, while an untrained man of the same height should weigh 11 stones. 43. The statures of the Metropolitan Police and the London Fire Brigade are given as selected men of the working classes. The former exceed the criminal class, with whom they have to deal, in stature by 4 5 inches, and in weight by 45*3 lbs. The men of the Fire Brigade are selected for their activity, and general fitness to meet sudden and trying demands on their physical and mental energies. The data referring to them may be accepted, therefore, as typical of the best physique which can be obtained for an English army, and of which our army should con¬ sist at its best. Complexion as determined by the Colour of the Eyes and Hair. 44. The difficulty of determining the prevailing complexion of a race, or of the mixed population of a country or a district, by the colour of the hair, as is generally done, and of basing a classification on it, is greater than at first sight appears. Not only do the various shades run imperceptibly into each other, but observers differ in their appreciation of the different shades when viewed under similar conditions, and the prevailing colour of a district determines the relative value of others. Thus a person living among a dark-haired race would consider brown hair as fair, while another person living among a light-haired people would consider it dark, or at any rate not fair in the same sense as the former would. Objections of this kind do not apply to the eyes, as the colour of the iris is due to the anatomical disposition of pigment in front of or behind that structure. In brown and the so-called black eyes a layer of brown pigment covers the front of the iris and hides the deeper structures, and itself determines the colour ; while in blue and grey eyes this layer of pigment is wanting, and the colour is due to the dark pigment (the choroid) situated behind the iris, the blue colour in various degrees re¬ sulting from the greater translucency of a thin, and the grey from a thick membrane. The marriage, moreover, of fair and dark persons often produces an intermediate shade in the colour cf the hair in the children, but only occasionally produces an intermediate change in the colour of the eyes, the rule being that they are blue or brown like one of the parents. The cross between the blue and brown eye should properly be called green (the deeper blue showing through an imperfect layer of yellow brown pigment), but from popular prejudice to this term, eyes of this mixed colour are generally recorded as brown grey, light brown or light hazel.1 45. For these reasons the classification adopted in this Report is based on the colour of the eyes, and with the object of more clearly defining the two prevailing shades of complexion in this country, namely the ‘ fair ’ as characterised by light eyes and light hair, and the ‘dark ’ by dark eyes See the Report for 1880, p. 134, for a further discussion of this subject. i

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