Noteworthy Families (Modern Science) | Page 7

Let the person from whom the kinships are reckoned be called P, and let Q and R be two of _P_'s kinsfolk, described respectively as fa bro and me si son. That means that _P's father's brother_ is Q, and that _P's mother's sister's son_ is R. It is a simple and easily intelligible nomenclature, and replaces intolerable verbiage in the description of distant kinships. My correspondents used it freely, and none of them spoke of any difficulty in understanding it. Its somewhat babyish sound is soon disregarded.
TABLE IV.--ABBREVIATIONS. ______________________________________________________________________ | | | | Males. | Females. | |_________________________________|____________________________________| | | | | Grandfather, paternal fa fa | Grandmother, paternal fa me | | " maternal me fa | " maternal me me | | Father fa | Mother me | | Uncle, paternal fa bro | Aunt, paternal fa si | | " maternal me bro | " maternal me si | | | | | Brother bro | Sister si | | | | | Son son | Daughter da | | Nephew, brother's son bro son | Niece, brother's daughter bro da | | Nephew, sister's son si son | Niece, sister's daughter si da | | | | | Male first cousins: | Female first cousins: | | 1. Son of paternal | 1. Dau. of paternal | | uncle fa bro son | uncle fa bro da | | 2. Son of maternal | 2. Dau. of maternal | | uncle me bro son | uncle me bro da | | 3. Son of paternal | 3. Dau. of paternal | | aunt fa si son | aunt fa si da | | 4. Son of maternal | 4. Dau. of maternal | | aunt me si son | aunt me si da | |_________________________________|____________________________________|
Those relationships that are expressed by different combinations of these letters differ _specifically_; therefore, in saying, in the next chapter, that each person has "roughly, on the average, one fertile relative in each and every form of specific kinship," it means in each and every combination of the above syllables that is practically possible.
Relationship may also be expressed conveniently for some purposes in Degrees of remoteness, the number of the Degree being that of the number of syllables used to express the specific kinship.
CHAPTER VII.
--NUMBER OF KINSFOLK IN EACH DEGREE.
The population may be likened to counters spread upon a table, each corresponding to a different individual. The counters are linked together by bands of various widths, down to mere threads, the widths being proportional to the closeness of the several kinships. Those in the first degree (father, mother, brother, sister, son, _daughter_) are comparatively broad; those in the second degree (grandparent, uncle, aunt, nephew, niece, _grandchild_) are considerably narrower; those in the third degree are very narrow indeed. Proceeding outwards, the connections soon become thinner than gossamer. The person represented by any one of these counters may be taken as the subject of a pedigree, and all the counters connected with it may be noted up to any specified width of band. In this book one of the counters is supposed to represent a Fellow of the Royal Society, whose name appears in the "Year-Book" of that Society for 1904, and the linkage proceeds outwards from him to the third degree inclusive. Usually it stops there, but a few distant kinships have been occasionally inserted chiefly to testify to a prolonged heritage of family traits.
The intensity with which any specified quality occurs in each or any degree of kinship is measured by the proportion between the numbers of those who possess the quality in question and the total number of persons in that same degree. Particular inquiries were made on the latter point, but, as already stated, the answers were incomplete. There is, however, enough information to justify three conclusions of primary importance to the present inquiry--namely, the average number (1) of brothers of the subject, (2) of brothers of his father, and (3) of brothers of his mother.
The number of Fellows to whom circulars were addressed was 467. The number of those who gave useful replies was 207, a little more than one-half of whom sent complete returns of the numbers of their brothers and uncles; some few of these had, however, placed a query here or there, or other sign of hesitation. As the number of completely available returns scarcely exceeded 100, I have confined the following tables to that number exactly, taking the best of the slightly doubtful cases. It would have been possible, by utilizing partial returns and making due allowances, to have obtained nearly half as many again, but the gain in numbers did not seem likely to be compensated by the somewhat inferior quality of the additional data.
The first three lines of Table V. show