480 SEMINOLE INDIANS OF FLORIDA. 
habits apparently conduce to an increase in numbers. The only ex- 
planation I ean suggest of the fact that there are at present but 208 
* Seminole in Florida is that at the close of the last war which the United 
States Government waged on these Indians there were by no means so 
many of them left in the State as is popularly supposed. As it is, 
there are now but 17 persons of the tribe over sixty years of age, and 
no unusual mortality has occurred, certainly among the adults, during 
the last twenty years. Of the 84 persons between twenty and sixty 
years of age, the larger number are less than forty years old; and un- 
der twenty years of age there are 107 persons, or more than half the 
whole population. The population tables of the Florida Indians pre 
sent, therefore, some facts upon which it may be interesting to spe ecu- 
late. 
