232 NATURAL INHERITANCE.
within the several classes are 36 per cent. of mild tempered, 15 per cent. of docile, 29 per cent. of fretful, 12 per cent of violent, 8 per cent. of masterful.
The importance assigned in marriage-selection to good and bad temper is an interesting question, not only from its bearing on domestic happiness, but also from the influence it may have in promoting or retarding the natural good temper of our race, assuming, as we may do for the moment, that temper is hereditary. I cannot deal with the question directly, but will give some curious facts in Table IL that throw indirect light upon it. There a comparison is made of (A) the actual frequency of marriage between persons, each of the various classes of temper, with (B) the calculated frequency according to the laws of chance, on the supposition that there had been no marriage-selection at all, but that the pairings, so far as temper is concerned, had been purely at haphazard. There are only 111 marriages in my lists in which the tempers of both parents are recorded. On the other hand, the number of possible combinations in couples of persons who belong to the five classes of temper is very large, so I make the two groups comparable by reducing both to percentages.
It will be seen that with two apparent exceptions in the upper left-hand corners of either Table (of 6 against 13, and of 10 against 5), there are no indications of predilection for, or avoidance of marriage between persons of any of the five classes, but that the figures taken from observation run as closely with those derived through calculation, as could be expected from the small number of observations. The apparent exceptions are that the percentage of mild-tempered men who marry mild-tempered women is only 6, as against 13 calculated by the laws of chance, and that those who marry docile wives are 10, as against a calculated 5. There is little difference between mildness and docility, so we may throw these entries together without much error, and then we have 6 and 10, or 16, as against 13 and 5, or 18, which is a close approximation. We may compare the frequency of marriages between persons of like temper in each of the five classes by reading the Table diagonally. They are as (6), 2, 9, 2, 1, in the observed cases, against (13), 2, 8, 1, 1, in the calculated ones; here the irregularity of the 6 and 13, which are put in brackets for distinction sake, is
