We shall presently see that these examples are by no means what Dr. Colenso would represent them to be, and that so far from proving his theory to be _true_, they prove it to be _false_. But first we would direct attention to the _character_ of the argument, which seems to us, from its very nature, unsound. According to the Mosaic narrative, there were about 2,000,000 of Israelites at the time of the exodus. If we allow ten to each family, there must have been about 100,000 families. Here, then, is the argument:--In eleven families out of 100,000, there were just _four generations_ during the sojourn in Egypt; therefore there must have been _four generations_, neither more nor less, in the remaining 99,989 families. Our author would have us suppose that during a period of 215 years, there must have been exactly the same number of generations in every family. He does not explicitly say this; much less does he attempt to prove it; he silently _assumes_ it. Now it is scarcely necessary to observe that such a supposition is in the highest degree improbable. It cannot be true, unless the members of each family married at the same age as the members of every other family, and unless this uniformity was continued from generation to generation for upwards of two centuries. This, however, would be contrary to what we know of the family of Abraham _before_ the sojourn in Egypt; it would be contrary to what we know of the people of Israel _after_ the sojourn in Egypt; it would be contrary to the testimony of all genealogical record; it would be contrary to what we see every day with our own eyes. One man has children born to him at the age of twenty; another, at the age of forty; another, at the age of sixty. The children of the last might easily be contemporaries with the grand-children of the second, and with the great-grand-children of the first. Thus, in the short period of sixty years, there might be, in one family, three descents from father to son, in another two, in another only one. This is, perhaps, an extreme case; but it shows at least how far the disparity may be extended, without exceeding the bounds of possibility. The present Emperor of the French had reached the age of forty-eight, when the Prince Imperial was born: whereas her Majesty Queen Victoria became a grandmother at forty-one. Thus, in the royal family of England we find two descents in forty-one years; in the imperial line of France only one descent in forty-eight years. It is, therefore, quite preposterous _to take for granted_ that, in _all the families of a whole nation_, the number of descents were exactly the same during a period of 215 years.