The Distribution of Senescence 



TABLE IV 



MAXIMUM RECORDED LONGEVITIES OF ROTIFERS 



(Bibliography from Hyman, 1951) 



2-3 Maximum Life-span in Man 



Human longevity records are even more notorious than those 

 of animals. They depend largely on unsupported memory and 

 tradition in a field where the emotional premiums of exaggera- 

 tion are high. 'Furthermore, even though this satisfaction and 

 vanity, of which we have spoken, were absent, yet such is the 

 peculiar and perpetual wandering of the human Intellect, that 

 it is more moved and roused by affirmatives than by negatives, 

 whereas properly it ought to be just to both, nay even, in the 

 forming of any axiom, the force of the negative instance is the 

 greater. 5 {Novum Organum). King (1911) found in the 1911 

 census a discrepancy between the size of the 85-90 year-old 

 age group and that of the next higher group, which was almost 

 certainly due to exaggeration. William Thorns (1873), founder 



59 



