24 SYSTEMS OF CONSANGUINITY AND AFFINITY 



If we should follow the chain of relationship beyond the diagrams, and compute 

 the number of the kindred of Ego, it would produce remarkable results. In strict- 

 ness two lines commence at Ego, one ascending to his father and one to his mother ; 

 from these last the number is increased to four, one of which ascends to the father 

 and one to the mother of his father, another to the father and another to the 

 mother of his mother ; and again from these four common ancestors the lines are 

 increased to eight ; and so upwards in geometrical progression. As a matter of 

 computation it will be seen that at the fifth degree each person has thirty-two 

 ancestors^ at the tenth a thousand and twenty-four, and at the twentieth upwards 

 of a million. 1 Carried to the thirty-first degree, or generation, it would give to 

 each person a greater number of ancestors than the entire population of the earth. 

 Such a .marvellous result, although correct as a matter of computation, is prevented 

 by the intermarriage of these common ancestors, by which a multitude of them are 

 reduced to- one. In the collateral lines the relatives are quadrupled at each gene- 

 ration. " If we only suppose each couple of our ancestors to have left, one with 

 another, two children ; and each of those on an average to have left two more (and 

 Avithout such a supposition the human species must be daily diminishing"), we shall 

 find that all of us have now subsisting near two hundred and seventy millions of 

 kindred at the fifteenth degree, at the same distance from the several common 

 ancestors as ourselves are ; besides those that are one or two descents nearer to or 

 farther from the common stock, who may amount to as many more." 2 But, as in 

 the former case, the intermarriage of these collateral relatives would consolidate 

 many thousands of these relationships into one, while others would, from the same 

 cause, be related to Ego in many thousand different ways. The rapidity with 

 which the blood of a people is interfused, or, in other Avords, tends to intermingle 

 throughout the entire mass of the population, Avith the progress of the generations, 



