Colonial Genealogy 



In this connection it should be noted that as each in- 

 dividual has had two parents, four grandparents, eight 

 great-grandparents, and so back endlessly in geometrical 

 progression, every one of Isabel's adult twentieth-century 

 descendants would, if the facts permitted, count not less 

 than 134,192,256 separate ancestors at the beginning of 

 her era, the twelfth century. Furthermore, as in such a 

 progression the sum of the series is equivalent (minus 

 one) to its highest term, each descendant should have 

 134,192,255 intervening forebears, making 268,384,511 in 

 all. Again, each child of this generation has twice as 

 many ancestors as either parent — that is, 536,769,022 

 in all, of which incalculable number not one would have 

 died in infancy, or without issue. This, however, has 

 led us to figures manifestly impossible in view of the fact 

 that the total population of England in iicx) did not 

 exceed two milhons, and that probably not one tenth of 

 these, beset as they were by war and pestilence, left per- 

 manent descendants. 



The simple explanation is, of course, that each fore- 

 bear must be counted over and over thousands or mil- 

 lions of times in each individual case. Indeed, no one 

 can guess how many tangled lines lead down to him from 

 Isabel, or even from Edward I. 



Conversely, if every couple of the twelfth century, and 

 of all succeeding ones, left let us say on the average four 

 children, thus doubling their own number with each 

 generation, Isabel's descendants alone, facts permitting, 

 should now number 134,192,256, as would the descendants 

 of every other pair similarly fertile, the whole yielding a 

 nominal total far exceeding the present population of 

 the globe! Thus in this matter, also, intervening indi- 

 viduals must be reckoned over and over again almost to 

 infinity. 



A boasted "line of long descent" is therefore the 

 merest fragment of a man's genealogy, and differs from 

 other lines only in being for a time a shade more con- 



n675 3 



