idea of the
possibilities of the extent of paternity. St. Jerome mentions a widow
who married her twenty-second husband, who in his time had taken to
himself 20 loving spouses. A gentleman living in Bordeaux in 1772 had
been married 16 times. DeLongueville, a Frenchman, lived to be one
hundred and ten years old, and had been joined in matrimony to 10
wives, his last wife bearing him a son in his one hundred and first
year.

Possible Descendants.--When we indulge ourselves as to the possible
number of living descendants one person may have, we soon get
extraordinary figures. The Madrid Estafette states that a gentleman,
Senor Lucas Nequeiras Saez, who emigrated to America seventy years
previously, recently returned to Spain in his own steamer, and brought
with him his whole family, consisting of 197 persons. He had been
thrice married, and by his first wife had 11 children at 7 births; by
his second wife, 19 at 13 births, and by his third wife, 7 at 6 births.
The youngest of the 37 was thirteen years old and the eldest seventy.
This latter one had a son aged forty-seven and 16 children besides. He
had 34 granddaughters, 45 grandsons, 45 great granddaughters, 39 great
grandsons, all living. Senor Saez himself was ninety-three years old
and in excellent health.

At Litchfield, Conn., there is said to be the following inscription:--

"Here lies the body of Mrs. Mary, wife of Dr. John Bull, Esq. She died
November 4, 1778, aetat. ninety, having had 13 children, 101
grandchildren, 274 great grandchildren, and 22 great-great
grandchildren, a total of 410; surviving, 336."

In Esher Church there is an inscription, scarcely legible, which
records the death of the mother of Mrs. Mary Morton on April 18, 1634,
and saying that she was the wonder of her sex and age, for she lived to
see nearly 400 issued from her loins.

The following is a communication to "Notes and Queries," March 21,
1891: "Mrs. Mary Honeywood was daughter and one of the coheiresses of
Robert Waters, Esq., of Lenham, in Kent. She was born in 1527; married
in February, 1543, at sixteen years of age, to her only husband, Robert
Honeywood, Esq., of Charing, in Kent. She died in the ninety-third
year of her age, in May, 1620. She had 16 children of her own body, 7
sons and 9 daughters, of whom one had no issue, 3 died young--the
youngest was slain at Newport battle, June 20, 1600. Her grandchildren,
in the second generation, were 114; in the third, 228, and in