n8 THE FAMILY AND THE NATION 



Among 200 wives of peers, Galton found that 100 

 heiresses produced 208 sons and 206 daughters, or 

 414 children in all, while 100 who were not heiresses 

 had 336 sons and 284 daughters, a total of 620. 

 One-fifth of the heiresses had no male children, show- 

 ing how precarious must be a line of descent through 

 heiresses. From such results as these it seems clear 

 that the extinction of many aristocratic families, and the 

 failure of many eminent men to leave offspring behind 

 them, are due, not to infertility in themselves, but to the 

 overwhelming temptation to marry heiresses in order 

 to endow with worldly goods the position and dignity 

 in life to which the families have attained by sheer 

 ability. Obviously, then, from the point of view of the 

 continued efficiency of the nation, the only sound way 

 of rewarding great services is the old plan of combining 

 a hereditary title, if such be the acceptable and custom- 

 ary offering, with a grant of " lands of inheritance " or 

 a substantial sum of money, that will do away with the 

 temptation of marrying heiresses for the sake of their 

 worldly substance. 



For the most part, families who have risen in the 

 world have been negligent in the matter of keeping 

 together their family history. In families who have 

 declined, though bare pedigrees are more often avail- 

 able, there is usually on record but little information 

 about the characters of the individuals who contributed 

 to the fall. The volumes of Burke's Vicissitudes of 

 Families are tantalizing, both in their suggestiveness 

 and lack of detail. The characters and even the 

 names of the mothers are usually lacking. Never- 

 theless, it is possible in several cases to piece together 



