CONCLUSION 22 ! 



thought for the morrow, must all be classed among 

 the failures of civilization. 



Whether or no the importance of the issues at 

 stake comes to be recognized fully by the nation 

 at large, individuals and families have it in their 

 power to act on the knowledge they have acquired. 

 In old days, more attention was paid to family history 

 than has been usual during the last hundred years. 

 From the beginning of the sixteenth till the end of 

 the seventeenth century, periodic visitations to the 

 different counties in England were made by the 

 Heralds, and the arms and pedigrees of gentle families 

 were recorded systematically. It is true that for scien- 

 tific purposes the pedigrees were very deficient, and 

 consisted chiefly of lists of names and places. But 

 the principle was sound, for it recognized the family 

 and not the individual as the true social unit, and it 

 needed but little development to have given a com- 

 plete genealogical and sociological register of the upper 

 ranks of the population, thus supplying information of 

 incalculable theoretical and practical value. 



It was then a matter of pride among the upper 

 classes to marry only into families entitled to bear 

 arms. With the English fashion of quartering only the 

 arms of heiresses in the shields of their descendants, it 

 was not possible to represent on a coat the ancestry with 

 any completeness. The foreign plan of quartering 

 all the arms of lineal ancestors gave a more systematic 

 and scientific method. The possession of the coveted 

 seize quartiers then in fact proved descent from sixteen 

 strains of blood, all of families of known and recorded 



