Note 2 — Chapter XX · GENEALOGIES AND POPULATION

Of course, in so large a mass of material there are mistakes.2 In one family no doubt a child has been omitted, especially when it died young and had no posterity to make its name important; in another case perhaps a child has been added to a family who was really the offspring of another mother. That there are such mistakes is certain, but they are probably few in number, and I have no doubt that, with one exception to be presently considered, such mistakes as have crept in do not appreciably impair the value of the genealogies as a record of the working of social regulations.