From the same number of the Round-About from which I have extracted the data on stature, I have obtained corresponding data on pigmentation, and have embodied them in the following table.  They are likewise very scanty, but they probably furnish as good a general indication of the drift of ideals in this matter as we should obtain from more extensive data of the same character.

WOMEN.  MEN.  TOTALS.

Fair women seek fair men. 2  Fair men seek fair women 2   4
Dark woman seeks dark man 1  Dark men seek dark women 7   8

Seek parity.......... 3      Seek parity......... 9  12

Fair women seek dark men. 4 Fair men seek dark women 3 7
Dark woman seeks fair man 1 Dark men seek fair women 4 5
                             Medium-colored man seeks
    Seek disparity....... 5 dark woman ........... 1 1
                             Medium-colored man seeks
                               fair woman ........... 1 1

Seek disparity...... 9  14

Men of unknown color seek
dark women ........... 3   3

It will be seen that in the case of pigmentation there is not as in the case of stature a decided charm of parity in the formation of sexual ideals.  The phenomenon, however, remains essentially analogous.  Just as in regard to stature there is without exception an abstract admiration for tall persons, so here, though to a less marked extent, there is a general admiration for dark persons.  As many as 6 out of 8 women and 14 out of 21 men seek a dark partner.  This tendency ranges itself with the considerations already brought forward (p. 182), leading us to believe that, in England at all events, the admiration of fairness is not efficacious to promote any sexual selection, and that if there is actually any such selection it must be put down to other causes.  No doubt, even in England the abstract aesthetic admiration of fairness is justifiable and may influence the artist.  Probably also it influences the poet, who is affected by a long-established convention in favor of fairness, and perhaps also by a general tendency on the part of our poets to be themselves fair and to yield to the charm of parity,—­the tendency to prefer the women of one’s own stock,—­which we have already found to be a real force.[175] But, as a matter of fact, our famous English beauties are not very fair; probably our handsomest men are not very fair, and the abstract sexual ideals of both our men and our women thus go out toward the dark.

The formation of a sexual ideal, while it furnishes a predisposition to be attracted in a certain direction, and undoubtedly has a certain weight in sexual choice, is not by any means the whole of sexual selection.  It is not even the whole of the psychic element in sexual selection.  Let us take, for instance, the question of stature.  There would seem to be a general tendency for both men and women, apart from