Page:The Bohemian Review, vol2, 1918.djvu/206



 Proportion of Sexes at Birth and in Population.—It is quite possible that if we had absolutely reliable and all-comprehensive data in this repect on the Slav as well as non-Slav peoples, it would be found that certain tendencies are more characteristic of the former than of the latter groups. There are some indications to that effect; but the data on hand fall, unfortunately, in many cases short of the needed precision. As they are, however, they show interesting conditions, as appears below. In proportion of living males to females at birth, the Slavs, while showing some differences among themselves, occupy as a whole a median position among Europeans; in the Balkan Slavs, however, the excess of males becomes rather marked. The proportion of sexes in population, which in a large measure expresses a different series of phenomena, is more exceptional among the Russians and the Balkan Slavs, with a relatively high excess of males, but this excess falls somewhat below the general European average among the Čechs of Bohemia and Moravia.

Longevity.—While our data in respect to relative longevity may not be all that could be wished for, they are nevertheless sufficient to show that in this respect, too, the Slavs as a whole and some of their groups in particular differ appreciably from the rest of the European population. These conditions are best shown by the data in the next table, derived from the lat est United States and other censuses.

Reliable statistics in this respect on the Čecho-Slovak group are, regrettably, not available in this country; but all the rest of the Slavs will be seen to occupy in the table the most favorable position. This is particularly true of the Balkan Slavs and Greeks, the more northern and even central parts of which contain a great deal of Slav blood. As attention has been directed to these conditions for a long time, and as in rural communities there are generally plenty of witnesses to the age of the persons reported as centenarians, these data cannot be explained away on the assumption of errors. Morever, the phenomenon of longevity is plainly generalized among the Slavs. It has received various explanations, but in all probability is merely a physiological expression of the relatively high grade of soundness of the race.

A good many of the Slav centenarians have been known to reach considerably above one hundred years. Thus in 1912, in Russia, at the 100th aniversary of the Napoleonic war, eight contemporaries and veterans of that war were found still living among the rural Slav population of Russia, and they ranged in age from 109 to 122 years.

Miscellaneous.—Perhaps it is worth while here to mention another physiological feature, which those who have become