human
The Irish blood tends to increase fecundity, and the Scandinavian blood tends to decrease fecundity, of other peoples in amalgamation. Is this contrast due to the Scandinavians being so fore-looking, whereas the Irish give little heed to the future; to the fact that the Scandinavians are the purest Protestants, while the Irish are the purest Roman Catholics; or to the coming together in the Scandinavians of prudence and Protestantism with a high status of women? At any rate, such caution in family is startling when one recalls that old Scandinavia was the mother hive of the swarms of barbarians that kept South Europeans in dread a thousand years, or notes what William Penn found among the Swedes on the Delaware two hundred and thirty years ago:
gpt
They have fine children and almost every house full; rare to find one of them without three or four boys and as many girls; some six, seven, or eight sons.