no THE FAMILY AND THE NATION 



pointed out, more often destroy the quality than the 

 quantity of the offspring, causing a decline in the status 

 of the family ; whereas marriages with infertile stock 

 will often bring the strain to an abrupt if honourable 

 conclusion. 



In studying pedigrees illustrating in a general way 

 the extinction of families by the first cause mentioned 

 above, we notice at once three apparently correlated 

 manifestations of infertility, which are often found 

 together in the same lines of descent. The first is the 

 prevalence of small families, in cases where there are 

 offspring at all ; the second is the prevalence of com- 

 pletely sterile marriages ; the third is the number of 

 offspring who do not even marry. As an illustration 

 of these three characteristics, three pedigrees are given 

 below. It should be noted that all the marriages 

 involved, except perhaps those of the last generations 

 in each case, took place before the prevailing fashion of 

 small families set in, and are consequently unaffected 

 by it. 



In Pedigree I. it is possible that the full history 

 of generations I. and II. is not completely known, 

 but it will be seen that in generation II. the three 

 recorded marriages produced but eight children, while 

 in generation III. five marriages resulted in four 

 children, of whom only one married. The individual 

 A in generation III. came of a strong, able, and fertile 

 race, and had a large family by a late second marriage, 

 thus emphasizing the infertility of the stock with 

 which we are dealing as the cause of previous want 

 of offspring. 



