of undoubted centenarian annuitants.* Many books have been written upon the art of prolonging life, but up to the present the subject has been mostly treated by the quack, whose principal qualification for the work is that he is profoundly ignorant of the matter, and that in his practise he uses the best means for shortening life, as we may be sure that he who professes to cure all diseases can cure none. The strict rules and regulations given for longevity are generally such that after a great deal of perseverance and careful attention to diet, exercise, &c., the patient, by making living the great business of his life, at last succeeds at about middle age in killing himself.

It is related of the celebrated Lord Montboddo, that when he was engaged in writing a treatise on longevity, he visited an old Scotch lady, reputed to be 101 years of age, and the following dialogue took place between them. Lord M.-" I presume, Madam, you've been in the habit of frequent ablutions, and often bathe ?"

Old Lady." Na! Na! I'm no fond o' floutering in cold water."

Lord M.-"Then, Madam, you've anointed your body with oils ?"

Old Lady." Na! Na! Fie, ye nasty creetur."

Lord M.-"Then you've always taken exercise very regularly."

Old Lady." Ou! I gang to the kirk on Sabbath, and whiles to the market; but I'm no fond o' walking." Lord M.-"I presume you are rigidly temperate even abstemious?"

* See Journal of the Anthropological Institute, July, 1875.

Old Lady.-" Na! Na! I tak' my toddy at dinner, and a wee drappie at bed-time."

The noble lord, finding all his preconceived theories set at naught, rose and said :—

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'Madam, had you done all I've given you credit for, you'd have been immortal."

In searching for cases of longevity one meets with a similar experience as the noble lord's. The "monstrosities of life duration," like all other monstrosities, are inexplicable. We cannot tell why a man should live 100 years any more than one should grow to eight feet, or another weigh 20 stone. It is very difficult to tell what is the average specific longevity of man, for the duration of life is much longer in one nation than another. The European reaches the highest average-about 40 years. This average is greatly lowered in consequence of the deaths in infancy. In London, for instance, out of 100 children born rather more than 72 attain the age of three years.* In Berlin, according to reliable statistics, one out of every three children born die the first year. The Anglo-Saxon race seems to possess, through some congenital organization and dynamic speciality, an exceptional vigour and power of vital resistance which gives it a greater potential longevity, or longer lease of life, than any other race on the globe. The Fuegians and other degraded races are stated rarely to exceed 45. At that age they are generally killed and eaten by their children, in order that they may escape,

*The difference between town and country mortality among children is something appalling. In country districts the number of children who die under five years is about 39 per 1,000, while the number in towns is 103 per 1,000.

what they consider, the dishonour of entering the world of spirits in a state of decrepitude.* It is a curious fact that some of the native Australian tribes have no idea of death arising from natural causes. When a man dies from disease or accident he is thought to have been murdered, and every means are taken to discover and punish the supposed murderer.

The population of the world-which is not supposed to be yet a quarter peopled-has been estimated at about 1,000,000,000 of persons, speaking 3,064 languages, and professing 1,100 forms of religion. The average duration of life is estimated at 33 years and 6 months; one quarter of mankind dying before their 7th year, and one-half before their 17th. Most nations speak of the age of man as being from 60 to 100, which indicate the same opinion with respect to the duration of life and excessive longevity. The ancient Egyptians, according to one of their monumental inscriptions, estimated the extreme duration of human life at 110 years. M. Flourens fixes 100 years as the normal life of man, on the principle that there is an exact ratio between the period occupied in growing to maturity and the full term or lease of existence, the same physiological law prevailing through the whole of the mammalia. Aristotle, who seems to have studied everything, put forth a similar

* Herodotus mentions a similar custom among the Massagetes, who, after a man had attained old age, his relatives met and sacrificed him, with cattle of several kinds, and, when they had boiled all the flesh together, they sat down as to a feast. This death they accounted the most happy, for they never ate the bodies of those who died by sickness, but buried them in the earth. And it was counted a great misfortune not to be sacrificed.

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doctrine; and Buffon, who went into the subject carefully, taught that every animal lives, or at least is competent to live, from six to seven times as many years as it consumes in growing; and he lays it down that, in absence of sickness or accident, man actually ought to live 90 or 100 years.

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"One thing," says M. Flourens, was unknown to Buffon, viz., the sign that marks the term of growth. Now growth continues in all animals until the bones are united to the epiphyses. The epiphyses is a portion of bone, separated from the body of the bone by cartilage, which becomes converted into bone by age. When once the bones and their epiphyses are united, the animal grows no more. The real relation of the period of growth to the duration of life is as one to five, or nearly so. Man is 20 years growing, and he lives five times 20 years, or to 100; the camel is 8 years growing, and he lives to 40; the horse is 5 years growing, and he lives to 25; and so on to other animals. We have then at last an accurate criterion which gives us with certainty the period of growth: the duration of that period gives us the duration of life."

But M. Flouren's theory, like many other theories, explains too much; yet it does not truly represent all the facts, nor does it include all the laws to which observation and induction lead. Lord Holland says, “We doubt much whether this period of epiphyses, or completion of bony union, has been determined in a sufficient number of animals, and with sufficient exactness to serve as a basis for numerical results."

In order approximately to estimate the determined length of life in man, we must put aside imaginary

data, or vague notions, based upon pre-conceived ideas, and enter into another important branch of inquiry, which has become in our days a new instrument of scientific research, viz., statistics; and opened up to us a wide field of inferential conclusions, drawn from facts extracted from the returns of the Registrar-General, and tables of life assurance. Nowhere, and at no time, have 100 years been the normal life of man. The argument that man ought to live a century, barring disease or accident, is much the same as saying that if there were no cases of death, man would not die. "What an idle conceit it is," says Montaigne, "to expect to die of a decay of strength, which is the last of effects of the extremest age, and to propose to ourselves no shorter lease of life than that, considering it is a kind of death of all others the most rare, and very hardly seen! We call that only a natural death, as if it were contrary to nature to see a man break his neck with a fall, be drowned in shipwreck at sea, or snatched away with a pleurisy, or the plague, and, as if our ordinary condition of life did not expose us to these inconveniences. To die of old age is a death rare, extraordinary, and singular; and, therefore, less natural than the others." The conclusions of Flourens find no place in the experience of mankind, nor in the general law of averages.

Again, though there may be signs to mark growth in man and the lower animals, yet, unlike the latter, there are in him no sure signs to mark age. For instance, the age of fishes appears to be marked on their scales, and that of the molluscous animals in the strata of their shells, in birds from the wear and form of their bills, the horse from