Beardless

[Morwen]

QUOTE] Quote:
The Stoors were broader, heavier in build, and had less hair on their feet and more on their chins, and preferred flat lands and riversides. [Added: Their feet and hands were large.] The Harfoots were browner of skin, smaller and shorter, and they were beardless and bootless; they preferred highlands and hill-sides. [Added: Their hands and feet were neat and nimble.] The Fallohides were fairer of skin and often of hair, and were taller than the others; they were lovers of trees and woodlands. [Added: All Hobbits were 'good shots' with stone, sling or bow, but the Fallohides were the surest on the mark.] The Stoors [> Harfoots] had much to do with Dwarves in ancient times, and long lived in the foothills of the Misty Mountains.

[/QUOTE] Ah, the bearded Stoors. It is said of the hobbits of the Eastfarthing that they were "Stoors in a large part of their blood, as indeed was shown by the don that many grew on their chines." By contrast "(n)o Harfoot or Fallohide had any trace of a beard". (LotR, Prologue:Concerning Hobbits)
So to amend my earlier statement hobbits, with the exception of those with Stoor ancestry, are beardless.

Quote:
In a note written in December 1972 or later, and among the last writings of my father's on the subject of Middle-earth, there is a discussion of the Elvish strain in Men, as to its being observable in the beardlessness of those who were so descended (it was a characteristic of all Elves to be beardless); and it is here noted in connection with the princely house of Dol Amroth that "this line had a special Elvish strain, according to its own legends" (with a reference to the speeches between Legolas and Imrahil in The Return of the King V 9, cited above).

So, Men with elven ancestry are beardless; those with strictly human ancestry are not (what volume of HoME is the above quote from by the way?)