In Norway, according to Uchermann, the consanguineous and the non-consanguineous marriages are equally fertile, averaging 6.1 children per marriage;[49] and in a Black Forest village Tenckhoff found an average of 4.6 children to each consanguineous marriage as against 3.5 to each non-consanguineous marriage.[50] In regard to the youthful death-rate among the offspring of consanguineous marriages, comparison with non-related marriages is more feasible. I have counted in each case all those children who are known to have died under the age of twenty. This age was taken for the sake of convenience, and to include all children indefinitely specified as having "died young." The results are given in Table XIX: TABLE XIX. ------------------------------------------------- Parentage. | No. of |No. dying | (Genealogies.) |Children.|under 20. |Per cent. ------------------------------------------------- First cousins | 672 | 113 | 16.7 Other cousins | 1417 | 211 | 14.9 Ch. of 1st cousins| 825 | 103 | 12.5 Non-consanguineous| 3184 | 370 | 11.6 ------------------------------------------------- (Correspondence.) ------------------------------------------------- First cousins | 759 | 88 | 11.6 Other marriages | 829 | 71 | 8.6 ------------------------------------------------- [Footnote 49: Feer, _Der Einfluss der Blutsverwandschaft der Eltern auf die Kinder,_ p. 12, _note_.] [Footnote 50: Ibid.] If the figures in Table XIX are to be accepted at their face value, and there seems to be no good reason for not doing so in the genealogical cases at least, the youthful death-rate among the offspring of consanguineous marriages far exceeds the average. The average in the correspondence cases is undoubtedly too low, as many correspondents failed to report the deaths. From the fact that a comparatively large percentage of these were reported as defective, we should expect a higher death-rate than among the unbiased genealogical cases. Dr. Bemiss found a very high death-rate among the children of consanguineous marriage, due partly to the fact that his cases were reported by physicians. He reports that of the offspring of marriages between first cousins and nearer relatives, 23 per cent "died young;" of the offspring of more remote consanguineous marriages, 16 per cent; and of non-related marriages 16 per cent. There is, therefore, a strong indication of lowered vitality as a result of consanguineous marriage.