A CENSUS OF CENTENARIANS.

Evening Star, Issue 9831, 21 October 1895, Page 3

A CENSUS OF CENTENARIANS.

A census of centenarians has been taken in France, and the results which have been published show that there are now alive in that country 213 persons who are now over 100 yeats old. Of these 147 are women, the alleged stronger sex being thus only able to show sixty-six specimens who are managing to still “ husband out life's taper” after the lapse of a century. The preponderance of centenarians of the supposed weaker sex has led to the revival of some amusing theories tending to explain this phenomenon. One cause of the longevity of women is stated to be, for instance, their propensity to talk much and to gossip, perpetual prattle being highly conducive, it is ’said, to the active circulation of the blood while the body remains unfatiguad and undamaged. More serious theorists or statisticians, while commenting on the subject of the relative longevity of the sexes, attribute the supremacy of women in the matter to the well-known cause —namely, that in general she Jeads a more calm and unimpassioned existence than a man, whose life is so often one of toil, trouble, and excitement. Setting aside- these theories, however, the census of French centenarians is not devoid of interest in some of its details. Ac Rocro an old soldier who fought under the first Napoleon in Russia passed the century limit last year. A wearer of the St. Helena medal—a distinction awarded to survivors of the Napoleonic campaigns, and who lives at Grand Fayt, also in the Nord—is 103 years old, and has been for the past sixty-eight years a sort of rural policemen in his native commune. It is a rather remarkable fact in connection with the examples of longevity cited that in almost every instance the centenarian is a person in the humblest rank of life.—London ‘Telegraph.’