Abstracts of Papers Read at the First International Eugenics Congress: University of London, July, 1912International Eugenics Congress (1st : 1912 : London)
Science
Abstracts of Papers Read at the First International Eugenics Congress: University of London, July, 1912
International Eugenics Congress (1st : 1912 : London)
Eugenics -- Congresses
The first case of this kind (Pedigree Chart, No. K 5) of
+segregation of racial eye-colour+ is that of the offspring
from a marriage between a blue-eyed Scotchman and a black-eyed, full
blood American Red Indian woman.[F] They had a son and a daughter, and
the eyes of both were Indian brown. This brown differs from that of
European eyes, and can usually be distinguished by observers who know
the two races well. The half-breed son (No. 2, Generation B) married a
full blood Indian woman (No. 1), who also had Indian brown eyes, and by
her had four children. Two of them were babies at the time my informant
knew them, and we may leave them out of account. The other two, a son
and daughter (Nos. 2 and 1, Generation C), had Indian brown eyes. This
result is in accord with Mendelian expectations.
[Footnote F: This is the same family as Family 5 described in
connection with Segregation of Nose Form in exhibit K 2a.]
The half-breed Indian daughter (No. 4, Generation B) of the blue-eyed
Scotchman and Indian mother married a Welshman (No. 5, B) with hazel
eyes. They had seven children. Of these, two--a son and daughter (No.
7 and 11, Generation C)--had blue eyes. The remaining children--with
the exception of a baby, whom my informant had seldom seen--had eyes of
varying shades of brown. Two (Nos. 9 and 12, C) had European brown, one
dark Indian brown, and one Indian brown eyes (Nos. 8 and 10, C).
The re-appearance of blue eyes among two of the Scotchman's
grandchildren is a clear example of the Mendelian segregation among the
gametes of the half-breed Indian mother of the factors which produce
blue eyes. The Welsh father, with the hazel eyes, must, of course, as
we deduce from other cases, have carried the blue-eye factors recessive.
The black-eyed full blood Indian grandmother also carried various
shades of Indian brown, recessive to the Indian black which she herself
manifested, since her daughter and two granddaughters exhibited Indian
brown and dark Indian brown coloured eyes. The two European brown-eyed
grandsons were probably in eye-colour hybrids between the hazel colour
of the Welsh father and the Indian brown of the half-breed Indian
mother.
The pedigree is thus, in respect of eye-colour--and of other
characters also which are not here described--clearly Mendelian in its
manifestations. It shows that the offspring of two very different types
of human races exhibit the same mode of Mendelian inheritance as do the
descendants of two contrasted parents of the same race.
[Sidenote: K 6]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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