t is the relationship arising
through common descent from the same pair of married persons, whether
the descent be traced through males or females. _Agnatic_ relationship
is something very different: it excludes a number of persons whom we
in our day should certainly consider of kin to ourselves, and it
includes many more whom we should never reckon among our kindred. It
is in truth the connection existing between the members of the Family,
conceived as it was in the most ancient times. The limits of this
connection are far from conterminous with those of modern
relationship.

Cognates then are all those persons who can trace their blood to a
single ancestor and ancestress; or, if we take the strict technical
meaning of the word in Roman law, they are all who trace their blood
to the legitimate marriage of a common pair. "Cognation" is therefore
a relative term, and the degree of connection in blood which it
indicates depends on the particular marriage which is selected as the
commencement of the calculation. If we begin with the marriage of
father and mother, Cognation will only express the relationship of
brothers and sisters; if we take that of the grandfather and
grandmother, then uncles, aunts, and their descendants will also be
included in the notion of Cognation, and following the same process a
larger number of Cognates may be continually obtained by choosing the
starting point higher and higher up in the line of ascent. All this is
easily understood by a modern; but who are the Agnates? In the first
place, they are all the Cognates who trace their connection exclusively
through males. A table of Cognates is, of course, formed by taking
each lineal ancestor in turn and including all his descendants of both
sexes in the tabular view; if then, in tracing the various branches of
such a genealogical table or tree, we stop whenever we come to the
name of a female and pursue that particular branch or ramification no
further, all who remain after the descendants of women have been
excluded are Agnates, and their connection together is Agnatic
Relationship. I dwell a little on the process which is practically
followed in separating them from the Cognates, because it explains a
memorable legal maxim, "Mulier est finis familiae"--a woman is the
terminus of the family. A female name closes the branch or twig of the
genealogy in which it occurs. None of the descendants of a female are
included in the primitive notion of fa