Mr. Worcester on Longevity. 29 
Both the Peruvian Indians and the Creoles are remarkably 
long lived, and retain their vigour and bodily faculties to a very 
advanced age. It is stated in the Mercurio Peruviano that in the 
small province of Caxamarco, containing hardly 70,000 inhabit- 
ants, there were eight persons living, in 1793, whose ages were 
114, 114, 121, 131, 132,, 135, 141, and 147; and the same 
year a Spaniard died in his 145th year, leaving 800 lineal de- 
scendants. ” 
‘* Within these last eight years,”’ says the Canadian Specta- 
tor, ‘‘ there have died in the village of Coghnawaga [which con- 
tains less than 1000. inhabitants] 10 Indians, each of them 
upwards of 100 years of age. It may be worthy of remark that 
the life of these people is made up of a regular mixture of idleness 
and hardship, and upwards of ninety meals in a hundred consist 
of Indian corn cooked in a manner peculiar to Indians.”’ 
The two most celebrated instances of longevity that have 
occurred in England, are those of Thomas Parre and Henry Jen- 
kins, both of which cases are recorded in the Philosophical Trans- 
actions of the Royal Society. Parre, a peasant of Shropshire, 
died, in 1635, at the age of 152. He was twice married ; the 
first time at the age of 80, the second at 120; and had off- 
spring by each marriage. In 1635, he was brought to London, 
and introduced to Charles I., but the change of situation, and his 
altered mode of life, particularly his drinking wine, soon proved 
fatal to a constitution hitherto supported by more temperate and 
abstemious habits, and he died the same year. According to 
Easton, [‘* On Longevity ”’] a son of his reached the age of 113 
years, one grandson that of 109, another that of 127, anda great- 
grandson the age of 124 years. 
