This is one of his main conclusions.
It so happens that in my own _Study of British Genius_, with which Dr.
Vaerting was unacquainted when he made his first investigation, I dealt
on a larger scale, and perhaps with somewhat more precise method, with
many of these same questions as they are illustrated by English genius.
Vaerting's results have induced me to re-examine and to some extent to
manipulate afresh the English data. My results, like Dr. Vaerting's,
showed a special tendency for genius to appear in the eldest child,
though there was no indication of notably early marriage in the
parents.[3] I also found a similar predominance of the clergy among the
fathers and a similar deficiency of army officers and physicians. The
most frequent age of the father was thirty-two years, but the average
age of the father at the distinguished child's birth was 36.6 years,
and 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. There have been fifteen distinguished English sons of
distinguished fathers, but instead of being nearly always under thirty
and usually under twenty-five, as Vaerting found in Germany, the
English distinguished father has only five times been under thirty and
among these five 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.
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