424 MERCER — SURVIVAL OF ILLUMINATIVE WRITING. [Sept. 17, 



been a member was fifty-five (55) years, Mr. Martin H. Boye, who 

 was elected January 17, 1840, being still alive. The next 

 longest term was that of Prof. E. Otis Kendall, LL.D., who was. 

 elected January 21, 1842, or fifty-three years previous. Our Presi- 

 dent, Hon. Frederick Fraley, LL.D., was elected July 15, 1842, 

 and had lived for fifty-two and one-half years. The average length 

 of membership of the living members on that date was sixteen and 

 one-half years (16.05), but this count includes only the American 

 members, of whom there were three hundred and thirty-seven 



(337)- 



While to a certain extent the average health may be improving, 

 it will take long periods of time for the predictions of physicians 

 to falsify the mortality tables. In this connection it might be well 

 to note that the records of the Board of Health of Philadelphia 

 show that, one year with another, while improved sanitary condi- 

 tions modify the fatality of certain zymotic diseases, the death rate 

 in Philadelphia remains practically stationary and at about two 

 per cent. 



THE SURVIVAL OF THE MEDIEVAL ART OF ILLUMI- 

 NATIVE WRITING AMONG PENNSYLVANIA GERMANS. 



BY HENRY C. MERCER. 



(Read Septemher 17, 1897). 



The notion of a novel collection was suggested to me by a visit 

 paid last April to the house of an individual who has long been in 

 the habit of buying '^ penny lots" of so-called trash at country 

 sales. There, scattered in confusion about the premises, rusting, 

 warping and crumbling, lay a heterogeneous mass of objects of 

 wood or iron, which by degrees I recognized as of historic value. 

 Forgotten by the antiquary, overlooked by the historian, they 

 were the superannuated and cast-away tools of the Pennsylvanian 

 pioneer. Because they illustrated, with the fidelity of visual facts, 

 the felling of the forest, the building of the log cabin, cooking in 

 the open fire and the disused arts and crafts, professions and amuse- 

 ments of colonial times, I gathered them together and, ransack- 

 ing Bucks county for other specimens, stored them by the wagon- 

 load in the museum of the Bucks County Historical Society, at 



