Even now woman is more particular in her choice than man, provided that the union takes place without reference to interest. A Maori proverb says, “Let a man be ever so good-looking, he will not be much sought after; but let a woman be ever so plain, men will still eagerly seek after her.”[1517] With regard to the Negroes of Sogno, Merolla da Sorrento states, “Women would have experience of their husbands before they married them, in like manner as the men were to have of them; and in this particular I can aver that they are commonly much more obstinate or fickle than men, for I have known many instances in which the men were willing to be married, while the women held back, and either fled away or made excuses.”[1518] Among the Eastern Central Africans, according to Mr. Macdonald, many cases are known of slave wives running away from free husbands, but none of slave husbands running away from free wives.[1519] In the crossings between unequal human races, the father almost always belongs to the superior race. “In every case,” says M. de Quatrefages, “and especially in transient amours, woman refuses to lower herself; man is less delicate.”[1520] Thus, cases in which negresses form unions with the indigenous men of America are very rare;[1521] and Dr. Nott, who wrote in the middle of this century, never personally met any one who was the offspring of a negro man and a white woman, because of the extreme rarity of such half-breeds.[1522] In New Zealand it sometimes happens that a European man marries a Maori woman; but Mr. Kerry Nicholls never came across an instance where a European woman had married a Maori man.[1523] Even in civilized society men are less particular in their connections than women of corresponding education, no doubt, would be, even if the rules of everyday morality were the same for both sexes. * * * * * In this and the following four chapters we shall deal with the instinctive feelings by which the sexes are guided in the act of selection. We have already observed that the sexual instinct is excited by artificial means, such as ornaments, mutilations, &c. Now we have to consider the intrinsic characters of a human being which affect the passions of a person of the opposite sex.