th his usual vigor and
grace. He is thin and spare and very tall, and those who knew him fifty
years or more remember him as the most skilful horseman in the
neighborhood of San Diego. And yet, as fabulous as it may seem, the man
who danced this Don Antonio on his knee when he was an infant is not
only still alive, but is active enough to mount his horse and canter
about the country. Some years ago I attended an elderly gentleman, since
dead, who knew this man as a full-grown man when he and Don Serrano were
play-children together. From a conversation with Father Ubach I learned
that the man's age is perfectly authenticated to be beyond one hundred
and eighteen years."

In the many instances given of extreme old age in this region the habits
of these Indians have been those of strict temperance and
abstemiousness, and their long life in an equable climate is due to
extreme simplicity of diet. In many cases of extreme age the diet has
consisted simply of acorns, flour, and water. It is asserted that the
climate itself induces temperance in drink and abstemiousness in diet.
In his estimate of the climate as a factor of longevity, Dr. Remondino
says that it is only necessary to look at the causes of death, and the
ages most subject to attack, to understand that the less of these causes
that are present the greater are the chances of man to reach great age.
"Add to these reflections that you run no gantlet of diseases to
undermine or deteriorate the organism; that in this climate childhood
finds an escape from those diseases which are the terror of mothers, and
against which physicians are helpless, as we have here none of those
affections of the first three years of life so prevalent during the
summer months in the East and the rest of the United States. Then,
again, the chance of gastric or intestinal disease is almost incredibly
small. This immunity extends through every age of life. Hepatic and
kindred diseases are unknown; of lung affections there is no land that
can boast of like exemption. Be it the equability of the temperature or
the aseptic condition of the atmosphere, the free sweep of winds or the
absence of disease germs, or what else it may be ascribed to, one thing
is certain, that there is no pneumonia, bronchitis, or pleurisy lying in
wait for either the infant or the aged."

[Illustration: FAN-PALM, FERNANDO ST. LOS ANGELES.]

The importance of this subject must excuse the space I have given to it.
It i