In the natural sciences we find the two Plinies, uncle and nephew, the families of Darwin, Euler, De Candolle, Hooker, Herschel, Jussieu, Saussure, Geoffroy St. Hilaire. Among philosophers we find the Scaligers, the Vossius, the Fichtes, and the brothers Humboldt, Schlegel and Grimm; among statesmen the Pitts, Foxes, Cannings, Walpoles, Peels, and Disraelis; among archæologists, the Viscontis. Aristotle, himself the son of a scientific physician, had sons and nephews who were men of science. Cassini, an astronomer, had a son, who was a celebrated astronomer, a grandson who was a member of the Academy of Sciences at the age of twenty-two, and a more remote relation who was a distinguished naturalist and philologist. Here is the genealogical tree of the Bernouilli family:-- Jacques Bernouilli | +---------------+---------------+ | | | Jacques Jean Nicolas | +------------+------------+ | | | Nicolas Daniel Jean | +------+------+ | | Jean Jacques All the members of this family were distinguished in some science; at the beginning of this century there was a Bernouilli who was a chemist of some distinction; and in 1863 there still lived at Bâle Christophe Bernouilli, a professor of the natural sciences. Galton, in a work of great value, but in which he often commits the mistake (from which I also cannot free myself) of confusing talent with genius, calculates a proportion of 425 men of ability to a million among the male population over fifty years of age, and the more select part of them as 250 to a million. Dealing with 300 families, containing 1000 eminent men, he concludes that the percentage of eminent kinsmen in these families would be as follows:-- 48 sons 41 brothers 31 fathers 14 grandsons 22 nephews 18 uncles 13 cousins 17 grandfathers 3 great-grandfathers 5 great-uncles The probabilities of kinsmen of illustrious men rising to eminence are--15½ to 100 in the case of fathers; 13½ to 100 in the case of brothers; 24 to 100 in the case of sons. Galton remarks that these figures vary, according as we are concerned with artists, diplomatists, soldiers, &c.