British persons of genius into four classes: Fair (with blue or predominantly blue eyes, and light or brown hair), Mixed (with greenish, blue-yellow or blue-orange eyes,[1] and brown hair), Dark (hazel or brown eyes and brown or black hair), and a class of individuals belonging to the so-called 'Celtic type' (blue or gray eyes and more or less black hair). The Fair type includes 22 per cent, cases, the Mixed type 29 per cent., the Dark type 41 per cent., and the Celtic type 8 per cent. This result probably indicates that all the races occupying Great Britain—however we may define or classify those races— have furnished their contribution to British genius. The interesting and somewhat unexpected fact which emerges is the undue predominance of the Dark class, a predominance by no means exclusively due to Irish and Welsh influences, since very dark men of genius have been furnished by the Scotch Lowlands and the English eastern counties, where the populations are, on the whole, decidedly fair. This tendency is the more striking when we recall that the aristocratic class shows a tendency to fairness, and that our men of genius have been largely drawn from that class. It would be out of place, however, to discuss further the question of pigmentation.
While British genius is thus spread in a fairly impartial manner over the British Islands, and while all the chief physical types appear to have contributed men of genius, there are yet certain districts which have been peculiarly prolific in intellectual ability. In England there are two such centers, the most important being in Norfolk and Suffolk, and to some extent the adjoining counties; Norfolk stands easily at the head of British counties in the production of genius.[2] The other English center is in Devonshire and Somerset. In Scotland a belt running from Aberdeen through Forfar, Fife, the country round Edinburgh, Lanark (including Glasgow), Ayr and Dumfries is especially rich in genius. In Ireland the chief center (if we leave Dublin out of consideration) is in the southeastern group of counties: Kilkenny, Tipperary, Waterford and Cork; there is a less important north-eastern center in Antrim and Down.
- ↑ It may be necessary to point out that eyes vary in color from unpigmented (blue) to fully pigmented (brown); between these two extremes we have various mixtures of blue with yellow or brown. The so-called 'black' eye is really brown.
- ↑ It may be noted that the founders of New England, both on the political and the religious sides, were mainly produced by this East Anglian center of genius. The people of this region are racially connected with the Dutch, and have always combined a genius for statesmanship and an aptitude for compromise with an inflexible love of independence. I may add that I have dealt more fully with some of the points touched on in this section in an article on the geographical distribution of British ability, shortly to appear in the Monthly Review.
