230 THE TREND OF THE RACE 



dark-eyed women more than light-eyed. In stature the tendency 

 to assortative mating was marked; the tall tend to marry with 

 tall, the short with short, and the intermediate with intermediate. 

 H. Ellis has added confirmatory evidence of assortative mating of 

 people of similar stature. He found that people tend to marry 

 those similar to themselves in complexion, although the number of 

 cases considered was too small to base a positive conclusion upon. 

 There is evidence that the tuberculous tend to marry the tubercu- 

 lous, due in part probably to the influences that bring them to- 

 gether in the same localities, and in part to a natural sympathy 

 which draws them together, and also to the fact that they are less 

 liable to be chosen by normal and healthy persons. That the 

 deaf tend to marry the deaf, as has been shown by Fay and Bell, 

 is due largely to the segregation of these people in institutions, 

 although the two other causes we have just mentioned may also 

 be influential upon those who remain scattered among the general 

 population. 



One of the most unfortunate kinds of assortative mating in 

 man, as has been pointed out in a previous chapter, is the unusual 

 frequency of marriages among the feeble-minded and degenerate. 

 The unattractive physical and temperamental qualities which 

 would be a bar to mating among people of higher grade are not so 

 potent a deterrent to matrimony or at least to a union of the sexes 

 among inferior stocks. What data have been collected on the 

 proportion of married people of marriageable age among the 

 Jukes indicate that there are relatively more of them married than 

 among people in general. In this family as in the Kallikaks, 

 Zeroes, Nams, and Hill Folk early marriages were customary. Of 

 the Hill Folk Danielson and Davenport remark that, "The large 

 majority of the matings which are represented in this report are of 

 defectives with defectives. A few of those who have drifted into 

 a different part of the country have married persons of a higher 

 degree of inteUigence, but the most of such wanderers have, even 

 in a new location, found mates who were about their equal in 

 intelligence and ambition." This condition is typical of similar 

 families. 



