e impossible to distinguish between
the different degrees of consanguinity, but wherever possible the
degree will be specified. It is probable that where a number of
marriages are vaguely given as consanguineous, few are more distant
than second cousins, for in the United States especially, distant
relationships are rarely traced except by genealogists. In designating
degrees of relationship the common terminology will be used, as in the
following table, expressing, however, the rather clumsy expression,
"first cousin once removed" by the simpler form "1-1/2 cousin."

[Illustration]

By far the greater part of the literature of consanguineous marriage
is of a controversial rather than of a scientific nature, and a search
for statistical evidence for either side of the discussion reveals
surprisingly little that is worthy of the name. Yet men of high
scientific standing have repeatedly made most dogmatic assertions in
regard to the results of such unions, and have apparently assumed that
no proof was necessary. For example, Sir Henry Sumner Maine "cannot
see why the men who discovered the use of fire, and selected the wild
forms of certain animals for domestication and of vegetables for
cultivation, should not find out that children of unsound constitution
were born of nearly related parents."[2]

[Footnote 2: Maine, _Early Law and Custom_, p. 228.]

Much space is given to the alleged "innate horror of incest," and
frequent appeals are made to Scripture, wrongly assuming that the
marriage of cousins is prohibited in the Mosaic Law.

The origin of "prohibited degrees" is only conjectural. The Christian
Church apparently borrowed its prohibitory canons from the Roman
Law,[3] and a dispensation is still necessary before a Catholic can
marry his first cousin. However, such dispensations have always been
easy to obtain, especially by royal families, and even the marriage of
uncle and niece sometimes occurs, as among the Spanish Habsburgs, and
as recently as 1889 in the House of Savoy.

[Footnote 3: Luckock, _History of Marriage_, p. 282.]

The prohibition of the marriage of first cousins was removed in
England by the Marriage Act of 1540,[4] but by this time the idea of
the harmfulness of kinship marriage was so thoroughly impressed upon
the people that they were very prone to look askance at such unions,
and if they were followed by any defective progeny, the fact would be
noted, and looked upon as a chastisement vis