Introduction. 



twelve children. Three of his ancestors Mathieu I., Mathieu II., 

 and Mathieu III. had altogether eighteen children, of whom 

 fifteen were boys. The son and grandson of the great Conde 

 reckoned nineteen children between them ; and their great-grand- 

 father, who was slain at Jarnac, had ten. The first four Guises 

 had, in all, forty-three children, thirty of them boys. Achille de 

 Harlay, father of the first President, had nine children ; his father, 

 ten ; his great-grandfather, eighteen. In some families this fecun- 

 dity has persisted for five or six generations. 1 



It is now generally understood that longevity depends far 

 less on race, climate, profession, mode of life or food, than on 

 hereditary transmission. If we consult special treatises on this 

 subject, we find centenarians as well among blacks as among 

 whites ; in Russia and Scotland as in Italy and Spain ; among 

 those who take the greatest care of their health as among those 

 who have led the hardest lives. A collier in Scotland prolonged 

 his hard and dreary existence over one hundred and thirty-three 

 years, and worked in the mines after he was eighty. 



Similar facts are to be met with among prisoners, and even 

 galley-slaves. 'The average of life/ says Dr. Lucas, 'plainly 

 depends on locality, hygiene, and civilization; but individual 

 longevity is entirely exempt from these conditions. Everything 

 tends to show that long life is the result of an internal principle 

 of vitality, which privileged individuals receive at their birth. It 

 is so deeply imprinted in their nature as to make itself apparent 

 in every part of their organization/ This kind of heredity has 

 long been observed in England, where life-assurance companies 

 require information as to the longevity of the ancestors of those 

 who desire to effect an insurance. 



There are, also, on the other hand, many families in which 

 the hair turns grey in early youth, and in which the vigour of the 

 physical and intellectual faculties fails prematurely. In others, early 

 death is of such common occurrence that only a few individuals 

 can escape it by great precaution. In the Turgot family the 

 fifty-ninth year was rarely passed. The man who made that family 



1 Benoiston de Chatcauneuf, Memoirs sur la Durte des Families Nobles en 

 France. 



