2. The percentage of consanguineous marriages is decreasing with the
increasing ease of communication and is probably less than half as
great now as in the days of the stage coach.

3. Although the number of marriageable second cousins is usually
several times as great as that of first cousins, the number of
marriages between second cousins is probably somewhat less than the
number of marriages between first cousins, but the number of second
cousin marriages combined with the number of 1-1/2 cousin marriages
probably exceeds the number of first cousin marriages alone. So that
the percentage of marriages ordinarily considered consanguineous is
probably between two, and two and a half.


NOTE.--In an article entitled "Sur le nombre des consanguins dans un
groupe de population," in _Archives italiennes de biologie_ (vol.
xxxiii, 1900, pp. 230-241), Dr. E. Raseri shows that from one point of
view the actual number of consanguineous marriages is little, if any,
greater than the probable number. The average number of children to a
marriage he finds to be 5, the average age of the parents 33 and the
average age at marriage 25. The Italian mortality statistics show that
54 per cent of the population lives to the age of 25, of which 15 per
cent does not marry, leaving an average of 2.3 children in every
family who marry. On this basis a person would have at birth 4,357
relatives within the degree of fourth cousins; at the age of 33 he
would have 4,547; and at 66, 5,002. In 1897 out of 229,041 marriages
in Italy, 1,046 were between first cousins, giving an average of one
in 219. In 1881 the number of men between 18 and 50 and of women
between 15 and 45 was 5,941, 495 in 8,259 communes with an average