HUMAN GROWTH.

Hauraki Plains Gazette, Volume XXXV, Issue 4745, 1 September 1924, Page 2

HUMAN GROWTH.

SOME INTERESTING FACTS. The average baby is 19%in in length at birth, and during its first year of life grows 9in. If he kept up this rate of growth for 70 years the result would be a giant of 64ft xn height. As a matter of fact, the rate of growth slows down amazingly after the first year. Between the ages of one and two a child grows only 3%in, and during its third year 2%in. After that the rate comes down to an average of l%in for 'the next 13 years. From 16 yeans onwards the rate or growth continues to diminish, says Tit Bits. During his seventeenth year a boy grows l%in; during his eighteenth, lin. The nineetenth sees him grow %in, and the twentieth %in. The average young man does not attain his full height until he is 25 years of age; but the rate of increase during the five preceding years is only one-fifth of an inch a year. The height of a full-grown and well-pro-porticned man should be six and three-quarter times the length of his foot, ihat of a woman six and a quarter times the length of her foot. Different parts of the body grow at different rates; the legs double in length by the end of the third year and triple by the end of the twelfth. When growth ceases they are five times as long as at birth. Before the age of 10 the foot is shorter than the length of the head; at 10 they are equal; after 10 the foot is longer than the head.

Boys and girls grow differently. The year of greatest growth in boys is usually the sixteenth or seventeenth. That is to say, the weight increases most during that year. In girls the chief increase is in the fourteenth .year. Girls usually reach their full height at or about 16, and their full weight at 20; boys, as we have seen, are slower in development. Boys are stronger than girls fr ora birth to the age of 11; then girls become superior physically up to 17, after which the tables are turned again. From November to April children g&in little either in height or weight; from April to July they gain in height, but not in weight; while from Jxily to November they put on weight, but do not grow much in height.