CONSANGUINEOUS MARRIAGES 259 
would depend upon the stock into which people are prone to 
marry, but on this we are given no data. 
It is quite unwarrantable to draw the conclusion that “pure 
bred and prepotent are practically synonymous,” or that the 
American who is an “‘extremely amalgamated group in conse- 
quence of amalgamation is a decidedly impotent group.” The 
American birth rate is low for the reasons that have led to the 
reduced birth rate in France and elsewhere. The decline of the 
birth rate in Europe has been quite as rapid in countries whose 
population is relatively homogeneous as in countries where there 
has been a great mixture of peoples. 
Jenks has studied the amount of in-marrying and out-marrying 
in eight chief ethnic groups in Minneapolis and finds that their 
order arranged according to increasing percentage of out-mar- 
riages is as follows: Swedes, Norwegians, Germans, Danes, 
Irish, English, Welsh, Scotch. ‘‘This series of ethnic groups, 
arranged in order of decreasing amalgamation and increasing co- 
hesion from the Scotch to the Swedes is the exact duplicate of the 
series of the same Minneapolis ethnic groups in order of increas- 
ing fecundity, except for the Irish and Scotch as seen in Table A. 
It seems that the most fecund ethnic groups are those least given 
to amalgamation, and vice versa.” It may be noted, however, 
upon inspecting the table, that as a rule, where there is a relatively 
high fecundity of in-marriages there is also a relatively high 
fecundity of out-marriages. As a comparison of the relative 
number of native and foreign born among the various ethnic 
groups shows, those groups composed mainly of foreign born 
members have the highest birth rate and (very naturally) the 
highest percentage of in-marriages. These are the groups which 
must be composed of relatively recent immigrants who would 
retain their traditional fecundity. Where, as in the Swedes and 
Norwegians the foreign born outnumber the native born members 
of their stock over two to one, we should naturally expect the 
birth rate to be high. With the next group, the Germans, the 
foreign born are only a little less in number than the native born 
(5,988 to 4,111). With the Irish, English, Welsh and Scotch the 
