d to assert that
consanguinity diminishes masculinity. The safest, and withal the most
reasonable conclusion is that consanguinity in the parents has no
appreciable effect upon the sex of the child.

CHAPTER IV

CONSANGUINITY AND REPRODUCTION

The principal object of nearly every previous discussion of the
intermarriage of kindred, has been either to prove or to disprove some
alleged injurious effect upon the offspring. The writers who have
treated the subject may be divided into three groups. First, those who
have maintained in accordance with popular opinion that consanguinity
_per se_ is a cause of degeneracy or that in some mysterious way
kinship of the parents produces certain diseases in the children. In
this group Boudin in France and Bemiss in America are typical. Second,
those who have flatly contradicted this position and have asserted
that on the whole such marriages are beneficial, and that crossing is
in itself injurious to the race. Huth is the chief exponent of this
theory, although he admits that where degenerate conditions exist in
the parents consanguinity in marriage may not be beneficial. The third
group holds that cousin marriages in themselves, especially if not
carried through too many generations, are not harmful, but that if any
hereditary tendency to malformation or disease exists in the family of
the parents, this tendency, inherited through both parents is strongly
intensified in the offspring, and that consequently an increased
percentage of the offspring of cousin marriage may be afflicted with
hereditary diseases. This group includes a number of the later writers
such as Feer and Mayet. Among the earlier discussions, those of Dally
in France and George H. Darwin in England take substantially this
position. On the whole this theory seems to be the most reasonable one
and with a few modifications it will be seen to account for all the
facts herein presented.

It is undeniable that degeneracy does in some cases follow from the
marriage of near kin, and probably with greater frequency than from
non-related marriages. But it is likewise true that many of the
world's greatest men have been the products of close inbreeding,
sometimes continued through several generations. Frederick the Great
of Prussia was the product of three successive cousin marriages
between descendants of William the Silent,[42] and among his seven
brothers and sisters at least three others ranked among the able