Democratic Sentinel, Volume 9, Number 13, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 24 April 1885 — Blue Eyes Going Out of Fashion. [ARTICLE]

Blue Eyes Going Out of Fashion.

As a rule, the first thing a lady does when she meets a stranger is to notice what the color of his or her eyes may be. This is somewhat ecoentric on the part of the ladies, but it is a fact, nevertheless. Now there comes the statement from a Frenchman, named Alphonse de Candolle, to the fact that blue eyes are becoming rarer as time rolls on. He has for a long time been studying heredity in the color of the eyes in the human species. It occurred to him, he says, in investigating, that the color of the iris offered the best outward visible sign. It is conspicuous. It can not be made by artifice. After early childhood it does not vary with agoj as does the color of the ball; and the character is, on the whole, distinct, For, according to him there are only two sorts—black (or rather brown) eyes and blue—gray eyes being recognized as mere varieties of the blue.

From the working up of the statistic i, in part from the series of observations made for the purpose, it appears tint, when both parents have eyes of the same color, 88.4 per cent of the children follow their parents in this feature, and of the 1i.6 per cent, of children horn with eyes other than the parental color, part must be attributed to avatism, that is. to intermittent heredity. But the curious fact comes out that more females thai males have black or brown eyes, in proportion, say, of 49 to 45, or 41 to 39. Next, it appears that, with different colored eyes in the two parents, 53.9 per cent, of the progeny follow the fathers in being dark-eyed, and 46.91 per cent, follow their mothers in being darkeyed. An increase of 5 per cent, of dark-eyed in each generation of discolorons unions must tell heavily in the course of time. It would seem tli it, unless specially bred by non-colorous marriages, blue-eyed belles will be tcarce in the millennium. Thus the fate of the “blue-eyed beauty” may be calculated by any ot the possessors of that slowly vanishing variety.—Hartford Pont.