The eldest child was found to have by far the best chance of turning out distinguished, and in this fact Vaerting finds further proof of his argument. The third son has the next best chance, and then the second, the comparatively bad position of the second being attributed to the too brief interval which often follows the birth of the first child. He also notes that of all the professions the clergy come beyond comparison first as the parents of distinguished sons (who are, however, rarely of the highest degree of eminence), lawyers following, while officers in the army and physicians scarcely figure at all. Vaerting is inclined to see in this order, especially in the predominance of the clergy, the favorable influence of an unexhausted reserve of energy and a habit of chastity on intellectual procreativeness. It should be remembered, however, that Vaerting's cases on his list were all those of Germans, and, therefore, the influence of the characteristic social customs and conditions of the German people must be taken into account in the consideration. Havelock Ellis in his well known work "Study of British Genius" dealt on a still larger scale, and with a somewhat more precise method, with many of the same questions as illustrated by British cases. After the publication of Vaerting's work, Ellis re-examined his cases, and rearranged his data. His results, like those of the German authority, showed a special tendency for genius to appear in the eldest child, though there was no indication of notably early marriage in the parents. He also found a similar predominance of the clergy among the fathers, and a similar deficiency of army officers and physicians. Ellis found that the most frequent age of the father was thirty-two years, but that the average age of the father at the distinguished child's birth was 36.6 years; and that when the fathers were themselves distinguished their age was not, as Vaerting found in Germany, notably low at the birth of their distinguished sons, but higher than the general average, being 37.5 years. He found fifteen distinguished sons of distinguished British fathers, but instead of being nearly always under thirty and usually under twenty-five, as Vaerting found it in Germany, the British distinguished father has only five times been under thirty, and among these only twice under twenty-five. Moreover, precisely the most distinguished of the sons (Francis Bacon and William Pitt) had the oldest fathers, and the least distinguished sons the youngest fathers.