336 
Proceedings of Payed Society of Edinburgh. [july 4, 
2nd Wife born 
Age 
2nd Married Age 
2nd Widower 
Died 
Children. 
S. or D. 
No. 
1 
2 
3 
Born. 
Died. 
Married. 
It is clear that from materials of this kind we can obtain much 
information, not only as to the probability of a marriage being 
fruitful, but as to the number of children to a marriage, the pro- 
bability that they will be sons or daughters, the length of time 
that elapses between marriage and the birth of the first child, and 
the intervals between the births of successive children, &c. If the 
age of the wife could also have been ascertained in every case, 
much interesting information could have been obtained as to the 
probability of a wife of any age having issue ; but it is only in 
exceptional cases that the age of the wife can be determined — in 
fact, only when she is a daughter belonging to one of the peerage 
families. On the present occasion I confine myself to the considera- 
tion of the one point as to the probability of the marriage being 
fruitful. If any child has been born of a marriage, I have considered 
it as a fruitful marriage, although all the children may have died 
young in the lifetime of the father. 
The number of marriages which are included in my observations 
are, of peers 427; of their sons, 199; of their brothers, 511; of 
their uncles, 384. On grouping these according to age at marriage, 
I obtained the figures shown in the following table (A) : — 
A comparison of these figures shows us that the percentages for 
the brothers and uncles agree very well together, and that the pro- 
portion of childless marriages is very much greater among these 
two classes taken together, than among the peers and their sons. 
This appears more clearly when the figures are combined as 
shown in table (B) : — 
