APPENDIX D.   233

conspicuous. Elsewhere there is not the slightest indication of a dislike in persons of similar tempers, whether mild, docile, fretful, violent, or masterful, to marry one another. The large initial figures 6 and 13 catch the eye, and at a first glance impruss themselves unduly on the imagination, and, might lead to erroneous speculations about mild tempered persons, perhaps that they find one another rather insipid ; but the reasons I have given, show conclusively that the recorded rarity of the marriages between mild-tempered persons is only apparent. Lastly, if we disregard the five smaller classes and attend only to the main divisions of good and bad temper, there does not appear to be much bias for, or against, the marriage of good or bad-tempered persons in their own or into the opposite division.

The admixture of different tempers among the brothers and sisters of the same family is a notable fact, due to various causes which act in different directions. It is best to consider them before we proceed to collect evidence and attempt its interpretation. It becomes clear enough, and may be now taken for granted, that the tempers of progenitors do not readily blend in the offspring, but that some of the children take mainly after one of them, some after another, but with a few threads, as it were, of various ancestral tempers woven in, which occasionally manifest themselves. If no other influences intervened, the tempers of the children in the same family would on this account be almost as varied as those of their ancestors ; and these, as we have just seen, married at haphazard, so far as their tempers were concerned ; therefore the numbers of good and bad children in families would be regulated by the same laws of chance that apply to a gambling table. But there are other influences to be considered. There is a well-known tendency to family likeness among brothers and sisters, which is due, not to the blending of ancestral peculiarities, but to the prepotence of one of the progenitors, who stamped more than his or her fair share of qualities upon the descendants. It may be due also to a familiar occurrence that deserves but has not yet received a distinctive name, namely, where all the children are alike and yet their common likeness cannot be traced to their progenitors. A new variety has come into existence through a process that affects the whole Fraternity and may result in an unusually stable variety (see Chapter 111.). The most strongly marked family type that I have personally met.