PROGRESSIVE DEGENERACY OF THE HUMAN RACE. 



I HAD often heard my grandmother declare, that the men and wo- 

 men of our time were not what they were in her earlier days. Often, 

 good soul, has she lamented, with tears in her eyes, that we had no 

 actors, no singers that men were less manly and women less beauti- 

 ful than in the days of her youth, and wondered what they would come 

 to. I was a foolish boy then, and used to laugh at her prodigiously. 

 I knew very well that Adam himself could not beat me at-pitch-and- 

 hustle, and prison-bars; and I laughed in my sleeve to think, that if I 

 could only get my grandfather at leap-frog, how I would undeceive 

 him touching the degeneracy of the present day in that particular. 

 As I grew in years, the continued asseverations of my elders produced 

 within me a spirit of inquiry. Happy would it be for me had it been 

 otherwise ! 



" Terra malos homines nunc educat atque pusillos." Juv. Sat. 13. 

 " Earth nurses now on her exhausted face, 

 A dwarfish, evil, and degenerate race." 



Had the love of wisdom been less firmly imprinted on my nature, 

 what a world of uneasiness and misery would have been spared me ; 

 I am convinced that the pursuit of knowledge is a most unsatisfac- 

 tory career ; and my whole life, alas ! has been a continued string of 

 painful discoveries. 



I will not enumerate the list of tributary groans, sighs, tears, con- 

 vulsive starts, and even fits of the cholic which attended my first 

 suspicion of the degeneracy of man, and the gradual course of my 

 conviction. Suffice it to say, that I have satisfied myself beyond the 

 intrusion of a doubt that we, the unhappy representatives of humanity 

 in the nineteenth century, are mere shadows in comparison with our 

 original species ; and further, that I have ascertained the constant 

 ratio of decline from the creation to the present day. I am now ac- 

 tively employed in calculating the exact epoch of futurity, when the 

 mortal substance of man shall be reduced to an infinite decimal. And 

 in all this, I beg to say, I have never once had recourse to Mr Bab- 

 bage's calculating machine, or any artificial means whatsoever. 



I shall begin, ab inilio, with our first parents, of whom I am in 

 possession of much curious and authentic information, not generally 

 known, which I may, perhaps, one day be induced to publish for the 

 benefit of society ; but at present I shall limit myself to the question. 

 M. Heurien, Mem de 1'Academie des Belles Lettres, has singularly 

 enough hit upon the same course of study as myself. He has fa- 

 voured the world, torn. i. p. 125, with a chronological scale of the 

 different stature of the human race in various ages. This ingenious 

 calculator, after surmounting many difficulties, with a patience wor- 

 thy of one who labours in the cause of his fellow-creatures, at last 

 fixes the average height of mankind at successive periods, as follows : 



Feet. Inches. Feet. In. 



Adam .... 123 9 Moses 13 



Eve 118 9 Hercules 10 31 



Noah . . . 103 6 Man in the days of Romulus 8 



Abraham ... 28 01 Ditto at the birth of Christ 7 2 



