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xxxvi   PREFACE

some elaborate arrangement which seems highly preferable at first sight, but may be found on further consideration to lead to much the same results.

In order to test the question, I marked each noteworthy person whose name occurs in the list of sixty-six families at the end of this book with 3, 2, or i, according to what I considered his deserts, and soon found that it was easy to mark them with fair consistency. It is not necessary to give the rules which guided me, as they were very often modified by considerations, each obvious enough in itself, but difficult to summarize as a whole. Various provisional trials were made ; I then began afresh by rejecting a few names as undeserving any mark at all, and, having marked the remainder individually, found that a total of 657 marks had been awarded to 332 persons ; 117 of them had received 3 marks ; 101, 2 marks ; 104, i mark ; so the three subdivisions were approximately equal in number. The marks being too few to justify detailed treatment, I have grouped the kinsmen into first, second, and third degrees, and into first cousins, the latter requiring a group to themselves. The first degree contains father and brothers ; the second, grandfathers and uncles ; the third, great-grandparents and great-uncles. The results are shown in Table VI. The marks assigned to each of the groups are given in the first line (total 657), and the number of the noteworthy persons in each group who received any mark at all is shown in the third line (total 329). In order to compare the first and third