Evening star., 1936-03-05

Redheads are scarce in Virginia
This is one of the findings Of Dr.
Robert B. Bean, physical anthropologist
of the University of Virginia, in study
of the hair and eye colors of "old Vir-
ginians of the State with
several generations of Virginia ancestry
His conclusions are based on color
estimates for 739 men and 889 women.
These included students and instructors
at the State university and a large num-
her of Virginia soldiers in the World War
A notable element among the women
was that of school teachers taking Sum-
mer courses at the university.
DR.. Bean found some notable differ
ences between the sexes and even more
notable ones between the university
group-both students and faculty-and
the soldiers The former he considered
a more selective group, representing
about the highest element in the popu-
lation. The direct ancestry of the old
Virginians is, for the most part, British,
but in their blood streams are traces OF
the diverse races out of which the people
of the British Isles arose in the begin
ming. These traces crop out at times In
hair and eyes.
The incidence of red hair was peculiar.
It was found in only about 2 per cent
of the persons examined. This is barely
half its incidence In the American popu-
lation as a whole. In the American
born population 80 of the males have
red hair and 6 per cent of the women. In
the so-called "old Americans" persons
with several generations of American
ancestry, the proportion is 2 per cent
for the males to 3.3 per cent for the
females. In the old Virginians the Incl
dence was exactly the same.
But. curiously enough, the incidence OF
red hair was almost twice as great-4.2
per cent-among the university students
as among the soldiers. It has been
observed In England, he points out, that
red hair is more common in the upper
than in the lower classes. There appears
to be an outstanding redhead strain in
the British race, some of which IS re-
flected in its descendants in twentieth
century Virginia. It usually is attended,
he found, with blue eyes,
The old Virginia women, DR.. Bean
found, are both lighter and darker than
the men. His table is as follows:
Blonds: Men, 81 per cent: women, ILL.,
Medium: Men, 70A; women, 57.6.
Dark: Men, 23.5: women, 307.
Red: Men and women equal.
Thus, DR.. Bean shows, the Virginia
women tend to be grouped more at the
extremes of hair colors. It may be that
two hereditary strains represented in
the European ancestry-that of the
blond Nordics from around the Baltic
and the brunette Mediterraneans from
Southern Europe-have retained their
distinctness in the female line better
than in the male. Or it may be, he
suggests, that the practice Of cutting the
hair, much longer established in men
than in women, may have had some
thing to do with neutralizing the shades.
Women who could be classified just
on the line between blond and medium,
DR.. Bean found. constitute about z per
cent Of the total, while only 1.3 per cent.
of the men fell in this category. The
climatic tendency, he shows, would tend
to reduce the percentage of blonds be-
cause the depigmentation which it en-
tails can ordinarily progress to the point
Of becoming q fixed quality only under
damp, cloudy and cold conditions. He
stresses that it was q Northern European
phenomenon in the beginning, although
there is evidence that offshoots Of the
blond heredity stream may have reached