WOMAN’S WORLD

Hauraki Plains Gazette, Volume VL, Issue 3132, 9 February 1934, Page 3

WOMAN’S WORLD

COLOUR OF THE EYES.

BROWN ONES NEVER CHANGE.

BLUE MAY BECOME BROWN.

The blue eyes of a baby may become brown, but no brown eye loses its pigment and becomes blue again. Records of change in eye and in hair colour are always records of darkening.

Observations in successive years on the same children were made in Britain by Miss R. M. Fleming and this is one of the points given in her report to the Medical Research Council. Altogether 2219 boys and 2073 girls came under observation, their ages being between about four and seventeen years. About 60 per cent, were of Welsh parentage on both sides, 12 per cent, of mixed Welsh and English ancestry, and 21 per cent, of English stock. The observations taken included in all cases stature, eye colour, hair colour, forehead shape, head length, and head breadth. Other interesting points are:— The sexes are equal in height up to eleven years; girls are taller than boys between eleven and fourteen; afterward boys become steadily taller. This last period of growth is longer for boys than for girls, and the boys grow more rapidly. Girls are darker than boys, the percentage of girls having dark eyes and hair being greater than that of boys. Red hair is found more often among boys than girls.

The mean of all head measurements is greater in boys than in girls at every age. Boys of nine to eleven often go through a phase of “liking to help at home” and of shrinking from rough physical sport. Parents are sometimes anxious lest such boys are going to be “effeminate.” This is a curious physical stage when feminine characteristics are dominant. Efforts to force boys out of this attitude by mockery or rough means often result in misery. Left alone, the stage passes.

The children were divided into racial groups, and with one of them, in which were girls and 1 boys with dark eyes, dark hair, and long heads, “getting on” in a commercial sense was not the main ambition. They wanted an opportunity to satisfy some aesthetic need, and to obtain that, when grown up, were anxious to continue in spheres which seemed financially and socially inferior. An extreme example of this type, which forms a large element of the Welsh population, was a man who acted as night porter, but who was cultured in literary and religious matters. There is much yet to be done, says the report, to break down the idea that to pass the first public examination at the earliest possible age is helpful to a boy or girl, even if it entails physical strain that permanently impairs the constitution.