Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 61.djvu/383

Rh have shown such tendency in a marked degree, but it is that at each step going back, the pedigree is what we should expect.

There are 118 individuals in this group, which may be considered as a region of the entire chart. It will be seen, by referring to a chart of this house, that the main tap roots of this stock have been from Ernst, the Pious, Brunswick Wölfenbruttel, Saxe-Coburg, Saxe-Sallfeld, and other branches of the Saxe houses. Ernst 'The Pious' himself, who appears many times in the pedigree, was a man of wisdom, virtue and marked religious bent; the Brunswick family was noted for its strong literary taste, as will be shown more in detail later, and all marriages with the Saxe houses can be seen to have kept alive those same qualities as the salient characteristics of the breed.

We see that after two hundred and fifty years, the same traits exist because there has never been a time when blood of another sort was introduced to contaminate or dilute it. Everywhere we notice that love of ideas and refinement of taste have been the object sought after, rather than the sway of power or the obtainance [sic] of military fame. There has not been one soldier of sufficient renown to appear in any of the smaller biographical dictionaries like Lippincott's or Pose's. One only was what may be called a successful general, but his career is described solely in the larger German dictionary.

From Ernst, the Pious (1601-1675), to Frederick IV. (17741793) the branch of Gotha contains 64 names. The branch of Coburg from John Ernst (sixteenth century) to Albert, consort of Queen Victoria (1819-1861) contains 118 names. There is considerable intermarriage, so that we find some persons repeated several times. Thus the actual number of individuals is less than this, still the value scientifically is 64 $$+$$ 118 or 182. Although in the furthest degree of remoteness we deal with sixty-four different tap roots, owing to intermarriages there are only twenty-one family names. Among these sixty-four, we find the following families composing the stock:

Saxe (different branches) twenty-one times. That is, the breed was perpetuated to the extent of about a third from itself. We find the name of Brunswick seven times, Mecklenburg six, Anhalt five, Holstein four, Hesse three, Reuss two, Solms two, Schwartzburg two, Baden, Bentheim, Castell, Erbach, Hohenlohe, Logwenstein, Cetlinger, Sayn, Stolberg, Waldeck and Zinzendorf each one. Among all these 182 related persons, there is not a single genius or individual worthy of grade 9 or 10 for intellect. The only two in 8 are Ernst II., of Gotha (died in 1801), who was a distinguished astronomer, and Louis Dorothea of Saxe-Meiningen (8) who corresponded with Voltaire, and was called the 'German Minerva.' She was the mother of Ernst II., the astronomer. Also there is not a fool, imbecile or moral degenerate among them all as far as is known.