I4 2 FOOT-NOTES TO EVOLUTION. 



great network. It is certain that the blood of each per- 

 son in Alfred's time who left capable descendants is 

 represented in every family of England of strict Eng- 

 lish descent. In other words, every Englishman is de- 

 scended from Alfred the Great ; as very likely also 

 from the peasant women whose cakes Alfred is reputed 

 to have allowed to burn. Moreover, there are few if 

 any who do not share the blood of William the Con- 

 queror, and most ancestral lines, if they could be traced, 

 would go back to him by a hundred different strains. 

 In fact, there are few families in the south and east 

 of England who have not more Norman blood than 

 the present royal family. The house of Guelph holds 

 the throne not through nearness to William, but 

 through primogeniture, a thing very different from 

 heredity. 



Mr. Edward J. Edwards, of Minneapolis, has re- 

 cently sent me some very interesting studies in gene- 

 alogy yet unpublished. These concern the lineage 

 of his little daughter, my niece, Mary Stockton Ed- 

 wards. 



Mr. Edwards find that the little girl, like millions of 

 others, is descended through at least two different lines 

 from William the Conqueror. The line- 



age ' on the one hand ' leads back in 

 thirty-two generations through the fam- 

 ily names of Jordan, Hawley, Waldo, Elderkin, Drake, 

 Grenville, Courteney, de Bohun, and Plantagenet to Wil- 

 liam. Sir Humphrey de Bohun married Elizabeth Plan- 

 tagenet, daughter of King Edward I. In the ancestry 

 of King Edward are the Saxon kings Cedric, Egbert, 

 Alfred, and Ethelred, while intermarriage with other 

 royal lines brings in Hengest, Hugh Capet, Charlemagne, 

 Otho the Great, Duncan, Rurik, Igor, San Fernando, and 

 a host of other notables of whom one would have less 



