+--------------------------------------------------------------------+ | No. of | Race. | No. of | Per Cents. | | Persons. | | Arches. | | |----------|----------------------------------|---------|------------| | 250 | English | 34 | 13.6 | | 250 | Welsh | 26 | 10.8 | | 1332 | Hebrew | 105 | 7.9 | | 250 | Negro | 27 | 11.3 | | | | | | | | _Hebrews in detail_-- | | | | 500 | Boys, Bell Lane School | 35 | 7.0 | | 400 | Girls, Bell Lane School | 34 | 8.5 | | 220 | Boys, Tavistock St. & Hanway St. | 18 | 8.2 | | 212 | Girls, Hanway Street School | 18 | 8.5 | +--------------------------------------------------------------------+ The two contrasted values here are the English and the Hebrew. The 1332 cases of the latter give a percentage result of 7.9, which differs as may be seen less than 1 per cent from that of any one of the four large groups upon which the average is based. The 250 cases of English are comparatively few, but the experience I have had of other English prints is so large as to enable me to say confidently that the percentage result of 13.6 is not too great. It follows, that the percentage of arches in the English and in the Hebrew differs in the ratio of 13.6 to 7.9, or nearly as 5 to 3. This is the largest statistical difference yet met with. The deficiency in arches among the Hebrews, and to some extent in loops also, is made up by a superiority in whorls, chiefly of the tendril or circlet-in-loop patterns. It would be very rash to suppose that this relative infrequency of arches among the Hebrews was of fundamental importance, considering that such totally distinct races as the Welsh and the Negro have them in an intermediate proportion. Still, why does it occur? The only answer I can suggest is that the patterns being in some degree hereditary, such accidental preponderances as may have existed among a not very numerous ancestry might be perpetuated. I have some reason to believe that local peculiarities of this sort exist in England, the children in schools of some localities seeming to be statistically more alike in their patterns than English children generally.