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Show October 15, 1927 The Light Eyes Have It - By Charles J. McGuirk [CONT'D FROM PAGE TWENTY-FOUR] eminent Americans over the descendants of the first-comers. Reducing Gould's figures on Union soldiers to percentages, we have: Blue Gray-green Union soldiers 44.9 24.3 Questionnaire 43 24 a preponderance of 2.2 per cent of the soldiers over the intellectual moderns. In comparison with the eye study made by the medical department of the United States army in the World War we have: Blue World War soldiers 35.8 Questionnaire 43 a majority for the eminent Americans of 7.2 per cent. And, finally, comparing 1,656 persons in New York streets and 432 persons taking trains at the Grand Central Terminal, we have: Blue Mixed Dark and and Brown, Both New Gray Brown Black York groups 52 40 8 Questionnaire 66 33 1 a difference of 14 per cent in the blue-eyed in favor of the eminent American. It is in the study of the nature of eye coloring that we find the trends of the various races toward their centers of population, and their manner of thought through the centuries. Eye color is the sign of a breed. In the eye coloring of the population of the United States lies her history, and the prophecy of her ultimate fate as a nation. Eye color is nature's way of protecting an organ that can be more injured by excessive light than any other. Its nature is described by Dr. Hrdlicka in his book, Old Americans. The many shades of eyes to be met with [he wrote] do not represent so many different pigments, but only so many grades and varieties of pigmentation and depigmentation. The eye pigment, like that in the skin and doubtless also in the hair, is there for protection; and though it may not be strictly simple or homogeneous, it behaves essentially as one pigment which is distributed in small granules in the lining and certain interstitial cells of the iris. The color of the iris is a reflection of light according to the quantity, density, and distribution of the pigment granules. If these granules are in considerable numbers and distributed throughout the endothelial, interstitial, and even epithelial cells of the iris, the eye is brown to " black," the shade differing with the total quantity and density of the granules. With the maximum density the eye is black, as in some Negroes; on the other hand, as the quantity of the pigment decreases we have gradually a lighter and lighter shade of brown until it passes into light brown, then gray or greenish with brownish tinge, then bluish or greenish gray, and finally, when no pig ment is in either the anterior lining or the interstitial cells of the iris with but little in the endothelium, the eye is blue. In other words, the less coloring there is in the eye, the bluer it is, and the coloring increases with the intensity and steadiness of sunlight. In every country in the world the population darkens in complexion, hair, and eye color toward the equator. THE greatest pigment or coloring in these three characteristics is found in the tropics, among Australians (aborigines), New Guineans, Negritos, East Indians, and African Negroes. As we go north, we find complexions gradually lightening and eyes almost imperceptibly doing the same. The complexions are dark brown in Egypt, light brown in the North African countries, deep olive in the Mediterranean, olive in southern Europe, and brunet in Central Europe. The eyes remain brown, though they lighten in color. But in the northwestern section of Europe embraced by a curve passing through northern France, northern Germany, and northwest Russia, we come upon the blond, light-complexioned, blue- eyed Nordic. Dr. Charles E. Woodruff, in his Effects of Tropical Light on White Man, tells why the Man of the North, is colored that way. Modern man [he says] is invariably covered with a pigment in proportion to the light and heat of the country to which his ancestors have proved their adjustment by millenniums of survival in health and vigor. Again, he says: In high latitudes where the sun is never near the zenith there MANY peculiarities of our national life may be laid to the British Nordic strain in America. is then little need of pigment except as a protection from snow glare. For instance, at a place 48 12 degrees north, the noon midsummer sun is only 65 degrees above the horizon, but for every degree nearer the equator, the actinic (chemical action induced by sun-rays) effect in midsummer rises so rapidly that man's pigmentation increases rapidly. This parallel might be said to separate the blonds from brunets. At a place 47 degrees north, the noon midsummer sun has the same altitude (66 12 degrees) as at the equator, but on every other day of the year, the equatorial sun has more power and the rays at 47 degrees north, less. The farther north of 47 degrees we go the less, then, is the need of pigment and the farther south the more. Blonds (blue-eyed) apparently arose north of 50 degrees; the olive (brown-eyed), between 45 and 35 degrees; the brown (darker brown-eyed), between 35 and 30 degrees; and the black Negro (with very dark-brown or jet-black eyes), within 25 or 30 degrees of the equator. From a comparison of Ripley's map of complexions and Bartholomew's map of cloudiness, we can deduce the further law that in Europe the blondness (and blue-eyedness) of a place is proportional to the cloudiness. Southern Norway seems to be the cloudiest part of Europe and the blondest, and if we draw a line from this center in any direction, the proportion of brunets increases. For this reason the northern third of France has more blonds than the southern third of Germany. They flourish best where there is less than 1,250 hours of sunshine per year-Scandinavia and the northern parts of Ireland and Scotland. They barely hold their own up to 1,500 hours -a European zone around the above with an extension into Switzerland and the northeast and southwest corners of the United States. They tend to die out if there is more than 1,700 hours-South- Central Europe and the northern half of the United States. They perish more quickly if there is more than 2,500-the Mediterranean basin and the southern half of the United States. And they can not stand more than 3,000 hours without serious injury in one generation or even a few years-as in our extreme Southwest and the tropics generally. ALL this may seem a wandering away from the reasons why eminent Americans are overwhelmingly light-eyed with the blue-eyed outnumbering the gray. But it is definite preparation for the appearance of the hero of the story. The New York count showed that the population of the world's most cosmopolitan city includes 50 per cent of men with blue and gray eyes; 40 per cent with brown and mixed eyes; and less than 10 per cent with black eyes. The rest of the country may assay a trifle higher in the light- eyed, because of the large number of Mediterranean people inhabiting the city, but the difference will not be enough to change the results. We are a blue-eyed nation. Dr. E. E. Free, biologist, under whose direction the New York count was made, summed up the conclusions of the questionnaire. As to race [he said], the conclusion of the questionnaire is quite clear that the blue-eyed peoples of North Europe not only predominate in Who's Who, but predominate to a larger extent than they do in the average American population of today. Undoubtedly this will give [CONTINUED ON PAGE TWENTY-NINE] Hair getting a bit thin? Yet it need not! 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