Heredity of skin pigmentation in man / Gertrude C. Davenport and Charles B. Davenport.

  • Davenport, Gertrude C.
Date:
[1910?]
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: Heredity of skin pigmentation in man / Gertrude C. Davenport and Charles B. Davenport. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    644: corded as of ''intermediate’' color, while 460, or 36 per cent., were given as blond and 302, or 24 per cent., as brunet. In the Family Eecords” the nomenclature sug- gested was: Complexion or skin color: / (fair), i (inter- mediate), hr (brunet), d.hr (dark brown),” etc. The returns in the family records are for 1,098 children, of whom 326, or about 29.5 per cent., are given as of inter- mediate” color; 635, or 58 per cent., as fair, and 137, or about 12.5 per cent., as brunet. Evidently blond” is used in a more restricted sense than fair” by the pop- ulation who filled out the blanks in question. All records together are of 2,394 children. Of these there are 843 in- termediates, or 35.2 per cent., 1,129 blond” or fair,” or 47.2 per cent.; and 422 brunet,” or 17.6 per cent. We thus see that only a little over one third of the chil- dren are recorded as having an intermediate skin color, while to nearly half are assigned the term blond” or fair.” The brunets” are a relatively small propor- tion of all children in the families under consideration. Blond” and fair” have certainly been used too broadly and this must affect somewhat the clearness of ' our results. However, taking the returns as they come, we shall be able to deduce certain conclusions of im- portance. In the following tables we have entered the grand- parental data as given. We have, however, not used in the statistics the grandparents as parents, not only be- cause in that case only a single child of the family is known, but especially, because the order of accuracy of the grandparental data is, on the whole, inferior to that of the parents and children. By and large, the grand- parental data are highly suggestive, but exceptional cases must be lightly weighted. {a) Blond X Blond (Tables Ia, Ib).—From two blond” or fair” parents 526 children were altogether recorded, of which 472, or 89.7 per cent., were blond,” 40, or 7.6 per cent., were intermediate,” and 14, or 2.7 per cent., were brunet.” Owing to the fact that the number of brunets given is very small and because it