The Duration of man's Life.

Te Aroha News, Volume I, Issue 42, 22 March 1884, Page 4

The Duration of man's Life.

To ascertain how long a man should live, the learned reason from analogy. The duration of life with the horse, and with other animals of the higher species, is proportionate to the time expended in their growth. The learned and ingenious Flourens has improved on the working out of this idea suggested by Buffon. All the larger animals, he observes, live five times as long as the time expended by them in reaching maturity. Thus:—

By a physical analogy, therefore, the ordinai'y Hfe of a man should be a hundred years at least. Dr. Farre,in his examination before the Parliamentary Committee on Drunkenness, gave it as his opinion that "by the last grant of Providence to man (Gen. 6, 3) his life is 120 years, and that, where disease arising from other causes does not shorten it, the reason why so few attain to that age is t© be found in the excessive stimulation to which the mass of the community is continually subject." " The popular opinion," observed the Key. W. R. Baker, " that the natural duration of human life is seventy years is founded on a misunderstanding of a passage in the 90th Psalm, where it is indeed stated ' the days of our years are threescore years and ten, and if by reason of strength they be fourscore years, yet is their strength labour and sorrow.' Now, it must be remembered that this psalm is ascribed to Moses, and that he is not speaking of the lives of men in general, but of what was occurring among the Israelites in the Wilderness. His own life, as well as the lives of the more eminent of his brethren, was far more extended than even fourscore years; and as he complains of the people being^ cut off through the displeasure of God, it is reasonable to conclude that he is not alluding to the period during which men were living, but simply to the fact that owing to the judgments of the Almighty which befel the Israelites on account of their sins, but few of them attained a more lengthened existence than that of seventy or eighty years. 'For we are consumed,' he says,' by thine anger, and by thy wrath are we troubled. They did not die anatural death, but were cut off for their sinsand unbelief by judicial dispensations." — W. U., Bedington, in the "Newcastle Weekly Chronicle."

A witty nobleman once asked a clerical gentleman at the bottom of the table why the goose, when there was one, was always placed next to the parson. " Really, my lord," said the clergyman, "your question is somewhat difficult to answer, and so remarkably odd that I vow I shall never see a goose again without being reminded of your lordship,"

brute !

The camel grows 8 years and The horse „ 5 „ The ox „ 1 „ The lion „ 5 „ The dog „ 2 „ The man „ 20 „ I lives 40 „ 25 „ 15 or 20 „ 20 „ 10 or 12 „ 100 or more.