HOW MEN CHOOSE WIVES.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LIX, Issue 18275, 16 December 1922, Page 2 (Supplement)

HOW MEN CHOOSE WIVES.

COLOUR OF THEIR EYES.

New theories of how men selected their wives were some time ago propounded by Professor Karl Pearson at the Royal Institution, London.

He gave it as his opinion that man has an unconscious tendency to select a wife of his own height, witb eyes of his own colour, a proportionate ;;pan from forefinger to forefinger, a forearm corresponding to his own, and a constitution of like physical- vigour.

These theories he expounded by means of tables and diagrams. Among every thousand men the colour of the eyes is divided as follows:—

Blue u ■ * «,. h* 363 Green *, K n »« 312 Hazel ~ „, ~ nm 127 Brown .„ „ * *, * „ 94 The eyes of women ar9 generally darker, only 286 of them in every thousand having blue ones. If these blueeyed couples imarried at random, the result would be that they would mate at the rate of 104 per thousand; but! he had discovered that the actual number of marriages per thousand of blue-eyed ■persons was 140, or 36 above tho random average, thus proving that the blue-eyed man and the blue-eyed woman are unconsciously attracted toward one another. In tho same way, men with greenish grey or hazel eyes tend to marry women with eyes of like colour. The average height of a man he gave as from &7in. to 68in., that of a woman as 62£ in., and he contended that the average tall man has a tall wife, and the short man a short wife.

" One could hardly imagine a man choosing a wife by measuring her from forefinger to forefinger," said the professor; yet his diagrams demonstrated that as the span of one increased so did that of the other.

A like result was produced in the measurement of thousands of forearms. his figures showing that there was a distinct tendency on the part of men with long forearms to marry wives with proportionately long forearms.