Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 58.djvu/549

Rh If we consider separately the eminent persons in whose ancestry two or more of the elements of British nationality (English, Welsh, Scotch and Irish) are mixed we find that the English proportion is only 51 per cent., the Scotch 16.8, while the Irish element has risen to equality with the Scotch, 16.8, and the Welsh is as high as 15.4. This would seem to indicate that the Irish and the Welsh are especially adapted for cross-breeding in the production of genius.

If we turn to the eminent persons of partly foreign blood (those of wholly foreign blood, like Disraeli, the elder Herschel and Romilly, being necessarily excluded from our study) we find that they constitute a very inconsiderable proportion of the whole. A strain of foreign blood (not going further back than the grandparents) occurs, so far as the 'Dictionary' enables us to ascertain it, only forty-six times. In twenty-four of these cases the element is French (at least half of them being Huguenot), in six German, in six Dutch. The most noteworthy fact about these elements of foreign blood is the peculiarly beneficial effect a French strain has in producing intellectual ability.

It is somewhat remarkable that the geographical distribution of eminent women by no means follows that of eminent men. Here, after England, Ireland leads, and Scotland is but little ahead of Wales. The intellectual brilliancy of Irish women is, indeed, remarkable, and has been displayed in literature as well as on the stage.

These facts serve to indicate that on the whole British ability has not been very unfairly distributed over Great Britain. We are still entitled to ask whether it is also fairly distributed among the populations of different physical type inhabiting the British Islands.

In investigating this point I have supplemented the somewhat scanty information contained in the 'Dictionary* by examination of such portraits of these eminent persons as I have been able to find in the London National Portrait Gallery, and I have confined myself almost exclusively to the color of the hair and eyes. For various reasons the data thus obtained are not altogether satisfactory; the imperfect and often vague statements of the biographers, the frequently faded tones of the pictures, sometimes badly hung, have furnished indications which are often doubtful and not seldom conflicting. An artist is a reliable observer in such matters, but he is liable to disregard the facts in order to obtain his effect, as we may see in Millais's portrait of Gladstone in the National Gallery, where the eyes are represented of quite different colors, one blue, the other brown. The evidence in some cases has been so conflicting that I have had to disregard it altogether, and in many cases the results obtained are probably only an approximation to the truth. With these allowances, however, we may still obtain results which have some value and are not without interest.

From the point of view of hair-color and eye-color I have divided