Man 167 



The effect of the length of time in two 

 generations on mental ability may be looked 

 at in another way. Take the genealogy of any 

 New England family and select from it an 

 early settler who had several sons, and whose 

 sons had fair-sized families. This will give 

 from six or eight to twenty or thirty grand- 

 sons whose births are distributed over from 

 ten to forty years. Arrange these grandsons 

 in the order of their births and look in the 

 records to see which ones became more or less 

 prominent in their neighborhood. By taking 

 a number of early settlers and thus obtaining 

 and combining a number of groups of grand- 

 sons, it will be found that the later-born ones 

 are the more prominent. An exception occurs 

 when the earlier-born grandsons and their 

 fathers were college-bred men and the later 

 branches were not. Also, exceptions occur 

 when the elder sons marry daughters of old 

 men, while the younger sons marry daughters 

 of young men. Even with these exceptions, 

 the later-born grandsons have the advan- 

 tage. What follows was the result of taking 



