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any outward evidence of the tendency to disease which they have inherited and handed down to their descendants, and not looking back, the parents assert that insanity, epilepsy, scrofula, etc., are unknown in their family."

In consanguineous marriages, the danger lies in the strong probability there is of both parents bearing some particular taint of degeneration which will become pronounced in their children, yet which might be escaped if they each were to marry a person not bearing that same, or allied, trait. Blood relationship of parents in itself is not inimical to healthy progeny. It is the double tendency to disease when the tendency exists, which brings about the ill effects to children.

The ancient Egyptians, the Romans, Persians, Phoenicians, the Incas of Peru, and other peoples of antiquity, were addicted to consanguineous marriage. Among some of these races, it was the practice for brothers and sisters to marry, and even mothers and sons, and fathers and daughters.

The Ptolemies, the famous ruling family of Egypt, intermarried, brothers with sisters, so as not to defile the royal line with ignoble blood. Cleopatra, for instance, was the daughter of a brother and sister, and she married her own brother.

One of the outstanding geniuses of the modern world, Charles Darwin, was the offspring of blood-related parents. They were first cousins. John Ruskin, also, was a son of first cousins.