CONSANGUINITY is relationship by blood, as distinguished from affinity (q.v.), or connection by marriage. C. is either direct or lineal—that is to say, in a line constituted by persons generating and generated, whether it be regarded in an ascending or descend ing point of view; or it is collateral, oblique, or is, where the persons related are not descended the one from the other, but are all descended from a common parent. To persons related in the direct line belong parents and children, grand children, etc., to the remotest degree; to those related in the collateral line belong brothers and sisters, uncles and nephews, aunts, nieces, cousins, and the like. In com puting the degrees of collateral C., a different system was adopted by the Roman and the canon law. According to the first, each person was counted as forming a degree, so that brothers, being each removed one degree from the father, were in the second degree to each other; according to the second, the number of generations on one side only was reckoned, so that brothers were in the first, and cousins-german in the second degree, instead of the fourth, as by the Roman computation. In the unequal collateral
line, again, i.e., where one of the two persons is further removed than the other from the common stock, the canon law reckoned the distance by the number of generations of the person furthest removed. " Thus, a niece is related in the second degree to her uncle, because she is related in the second degree to her grandfather, the common stock; and by the same rule, she is no further removed from her uncle's son; which abundantly discovers the absurdity of that method of reckoning."—Erskine's Institute, b. i. tit. vi. s. 8.
The. different methods in which the degrees of C. and affinity are computed in Eng land and Scotland are explained under MARRIAGE, SUCCESSION, HEIR, etc.