LUTHER BURBANK 



ing not unlike that which Mr. Burbank practices 

 when he would accentuate a desirable quality in 

 one of his plant families. The case has double 

 interest in the present view because, in consider- 

 ing it, we are brought back to the family of the 

 seven brothers whose practical experiment in 

 eugenic breeding was referred to in an earlier 

 chapter. 



It will be recalled that of the seven brothers 

 only one married, and that in the succeeding gen- 

 erations the duty of transmitting the family name 

 devolved upon one Ernest Augustus, Bishop of 

 Osnabriick, who married an extraordinary 

 woman, Sophia of Palatine. The child of this 

 union was married to a daughter of the Bishop's 

 brother, and these cousins were the grandparents 

 of Frederick the Great and his distinguished fra- 

 ternity. 



When a chart showing the full genealogy of 

 this extraordinary family is shown it appears that 

 the father and mother of Frederick the Great 

 were cousins ; that both pairs of his grandparents 

 in turn were cousins ; and that his paternal grand- 

 mother was the sister of his maternal grandfather 

 and cousin of his maternal grandmother. 



In the third generation, of four pairs of an- 

 cestors, one pair appears in both paternal and 

 maternal strains, so that there are only six per- 

 sons, and two of the six are brothers; there be- 

 ing only five ancestral strains of blood repre- 

 sented, instead of the normal eight. 



Here, then, is an extraordinary case of inbreed- 

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