as
it prevails.

In future numbers the true basis and indications of longevity in man
will be fully illustrated.

The attainable limits of human longevity are generally underrated by
the medical profession and by popular opinion. Instead of the
Scriptural limit of threescore and ten I would estimate twice that
amount, or 140 years, as the ideal age of healthy longevity, when
mankind shall have been bred and trained with the same wise energy
that has been expended on horses and cattle. Of the present scrub
race, a very large number ought never to have been born, and ought not
to be allowed to transmit their physical and moral deficiencies to
posterity.

The estimate of 140 years as a practicable longevity for a nobler
generation is sustained by the number of that age (fourteen, if I
recollect rightly) found in Italy by a census under one of the later
Roman emperors. But for the race now on the globe a more applicable
estimate is that of the European scientist, that the normal longevity
of an animal is five times its period of growth,--a rule which gives
the camel forty years, the horse twenty-five, the lion twenty, the dog
ten, the rabbit five. By this calculation man's twenty years of growth
indicate 100. But growth is not limited to twenty, and if we extend
the period of maturing to twenty-eight, the same rule would give us
140 as an age for the best specimens of humanity, which has been
attained in rare cases, its general possibility in improved conditions
being thus demonstrated.

There are many fine examples of longevity at this time. The famous
French chemist Chevreul has just completed his hundredth year at
Paris, in the full vigor of his intellect.

The _Novosti_, a Russian journal, recently mentions the death in the
almshouse of St. Petersburg of a man aged 122 years, whose mental
faculties were preserved up to his death, and who had excellent health
to the age of 118.

We have similar examples in the United States. Mrs. Celia Monroe, a
colored woman, who died a few weeks ago at Kansas City was believed to
be 125. She was going about a few days before her death.

Farmer O'Leary of Elkton, Minnesota, is over 112. Noah Raby of
Plainfield, New Jersey, is in his 115th year. He supports himself by
his work in the summer, and looks like a man of 80.

Of very recent deaths we have: Amos Hunt of Barnesville, Georgia, who
died at 105, leaving twenty-three of his twenty-eight children. Mrs.
Raymond of Wilton,