NATIONAL DEATH RATES.--In France, 48 per cent of the deaths are of persons over fifty years of age; and what is more remarkable, 25 per cent are of persons over seventy years of age. The French present the best showing, except, perhaps, the Irish, of any nation as regards long life. Only about 26 per cent of their deaths are of children under five years. About 6 per cent only are of persons from five to twenty years. No nation of Europe is supposed to be more oblivious of sanitary science than the Irish, and yet a far greater percentage of the people of Ireland than of any other people, except the French, live to and beyond the age of seventy years. Nearly five in 100 of the deaths are of persons over eighty-five years of age! Only about 35 per cent of the deaths are of persons under twenty years of age. About 42 per cent of the deaths are of persons over fifty-five years. One half almost of the deaths are of persons over forty-five years. In England and Wales only 33 per cent of the deaths are of persons over forty-five years, while in the United States only 30 per cent are of persons over forty years of age.--T. S. Sozinksey, M. D., in _Scientific American_. RELIGIOUS MEDIAEVALISM IN AMERICA.--Twelve miles from Dubuque, Ia., there stands in grim isolation, upon a blackened and desolate prairie, a monastery of the fifteenth century pattern. Every morning at 2 o'clock the monks who occupy this lugubrious dwelling-place arise from the hard planks which serve them in lieu of beds, and pray in wooden stalls, so constructed as to compel them either to stand or kneel. Their devotions completed, the next duty is for each to go into the yard and dig a part of his own grave, and when they have it once completed, they fill it up again, and repeat the operation indefinitely throughout their lives. They are not permitted to speak to each other except by special dispensation, which is very rarely given except at the close of a meal, when each one says to the other "Memento mori"--remember that you are to die. The system resembles, in all essential respects, that of the Indian fakirs and other religious enthusiasts who believe that the only way to please God is to make one's self as miserable as possible.--_Herald_.