le line mentioned in history
whose birth was authentically recorded at its occurrence has reached
one hundred years. They have taken the worst station in life in which
to find longevity as their field of observation. Longevity is always
most common in the middle and lower classes, in which we cannot expect
to find the records preserved with historical correctness.

The Testimony of Statistics.--Walford in his wonderful "Encyclopedia of
Insurance" says that in England the "Royal Exchange" for a period of
one hundred and thirty-five years had insured no life which survived
ninety-six. The "London Assurance" for the same period had no clients
who lived over ninety, and the "Equitable" had only one at ninety-six.
In an English Tontine there was in 1693 a person who died at one
hundred; and in Perth there lived a nominee at one hundred and
twenty-two and another at one hundred and seven. On the other hand, a
writer in the Strand Magazine points out that an insurance investigator
some years ago gathered a list of 225 centenarians of almost every
social rank and many nationalities, but the majority of them Britons or
Russians.

In reviewing Walford's statistics we must remember that it has only
been in recent years that the middle and lower classes of people have
taken insurance on their lives. Formerly only the wealthy and those
exposed to early demise were in the habit of insuring.

Dr. Ogle of the English Registrar-General's Department gives tables of
expectancy that show that 82 males and 225 females out of 1,000,000 are
alive at one hundred years. The figures are based on the death-rates of
the years 1871-80.

The researches of Hardy in the thirteenth, fourteenth, fifteenth, and
sixteenth centuries are said to indicate that three-score-and-ten was
considered old age; yet many old tombstones and monuments contain
inscriptions recording age far beyond this, and even the pages of
ordinary biographies disprove the alleged results of Hardy's research.

In all statistical work of an individual type the histories of the
lower classes are almost excluded; in the olden times only the lives
and movements of the most prominent are thought worthy of record. The
reliable parish register is too often monopolized by the gentry,
inferior births not being thought worth recording.

Many eminent scientists say that the natural term of the life of an
animal is five times the period needed for its development. Taking
twenty-one as the