Show very largo large families under the title of many arrows in the quiver a writer in all the year tear hound round has collected from flom ates notes and queries aud and various var vur ous other publications an amazing list of cases an answering swerin to the question are there any well nell authenticated examples exam ples plea of a father or a mother having had two dozes dozen children or more beginning with the lowest number mentioned in the query the writer cites six instances proving the affirmative of the question ques tion among the most curious of these is that of col john turner which is 14 recovered from a volume of celebrated trials while the suit was in progress in which this gentleman was involved he gave in the following casual bit of testimony concerning his wife wire she sat down being somewhat fat and weary heart I 1 have bad twenty seven children by her sons and twelve daughters another interesting example is that of a publicans public ans wife at chester who was living twenty years ago and had bad borne twenty six child en within sixteen years there were a number of twins included in these births agbird A third case notable is that of a woman who al the beginning of the present century resided at new road and had ben the mother of twenty eight children all of whom had bad been single births and hal lived several months although not more than ten were surviving at any one time passing e onto on to a still higher number nine niue instances are recorded where thirty or moore more children were borne of the same parent an old copy of ot the Gent lemans magazine magay contains the obituary y notice of mrs melbourne who died at the age of and had borne borno thirty children A woman in essex is mentioned who had bad fifteen boys in then to make the thing even bad fifteen girls in the same unbroken sequence it is stated that when charles V entered ghent in state aa as to the count of flanders one oliver blinman blin jan jau whose wife had brought him twenty one boy boys 4 and ten girls presented himself badore the emperor at the hord head of hig his hi corps of boys boss boysell boy doy sall sail all ail in uniform of course the marvelous moar roar spectacle secured e a pension for the prosperous father but the final fate late of this numerous family was most the whole thirty one children were destroyed by the black death which prevailed in isag 1856 and the bereft parents followed their spring to the grave soon after ghent erected a memorial to thi this q extraordinary family which Is still in preservation toward the close of the last century a remarkable bight sight was witnessed at riston le moor in cumberland viz a procession consisting of a men man and wide wife and thirty children marching to church to attend the baptism of the last and thirty farst first youngster added to the family group it is related that when the emperor henry it was once traveling through germany the count of gave over to his sovereign his hid thirty two children as the most pre precious clous cious jewels he could ofner offer to the crown in a number of the Gent lemans magazine for the year 1756 there occurs this terse teree notice under the head of births A woman in vere street of the thirty fifth child vy one husband advancing yau vau yan cing to yet a higher figure our authority gives four examples of or upwards of thirty five children of or one and the same mother early in the sixteenth century thomai thomal and helen heien urquhart of cromarty castle were the proud parents of or twenty five sons who grew up to manhood and of eleven daughters daughten who lived to be married and many man of them the mothers of large faar families towards the cloe close of the seventeenth entee nth century thomas greenhill hills a surgeon and author of a treatise on the art of embalming ad dressed a petition to the duke of norfolk then earl marshal marshai biar Blar of england in which he be prayed that in consideration of your petitioner pe tit loner ioner being the seventh son and ind thirty ninth child of one father and mother your grace would be pleased to signalize by some somo particular motto or augmentation in his coat of armor to transmit to posterity BO so uncommon a thing the application was granted the addition to the green of armb arnas being a deml demi grill grimn a powdered with thirty nine mullets one of the most remarkable instanced of fertility is afforded afforde d by the bathurst fa family trilly the youngest brother ther of the late lord rd b had ad two by Ms furt wife and fourteen by his second while two brothers and a sister of his had during their married lives ilves sixty four children making in indall all ali just one hund hundred redas as the prop progeny of the four couples proceeding to the incredible number of forty children there are five cases cited pennant transcribe transcribes in his tour of wales the foli foll following irig epitaph here lyeth the body of nicholas El ocker hocker of conway gent who was the forty first child of his father william hocker hooker by alice his wife and the father of twenty seven I 1 children 1637 11 an baschi inscription on on a tombstone in heydon churchyard yorkshire states that william am stratton cratton Sf was buried in 1734 at the age of 97 and that he be had bad had bad forty nive five children twenty eight by bis his first wife lar jai al d seven seventeen te en by her successor if is said that a florentine noble the I 1 marchese Blare hese bese Fesco baldi pos possesses sews the tile portrait of an ancestress anc etress on which is inscribed the declaration that the lady had had nifty fifty two children never les leas than three at a birth and on one occasion six at a birth A still more marvelous is taken from the Collect unea iea ica in the hardean collect collection lu where it is recorded that a scotch weaver had by one ono wife sixt two children all of whom lived to be baptized and forty six of whom grew to manhood ald aud four to womanhood but we have borrowed a many cases from the wondrous store of our informant as the average reader will care to go over the original writer does not vouch for the authenticity of all of them but amply am ply repeats them as they were given to him there therefore theredore foret those hose which the cred credulity y may well be taken with a i grain of allowance nevertheless there are in the list we have quoted a suni elent clent number of unquestionable examples of remarkable fecundity to create our special wonder As a fitting climax to the series of astonishing stories we copy verbatim the closing paragraph of the article from which the whole have been extracted horace walpole speaks of an ancient lady whom ho lift visited one oue mrs godfrey she had a daughter who had a daughter la lady W I 1 al degrave who had llad a son po lord rd wal eg rave who had a daughter cu g h ter lady harriet beard who had a daughter Count countess esai esal dowager of i who had a daughter an infant son horace walpole saw all the eight generations at different periods of his life the secret hero here was early earl eari v marriages a one after alter another ex |