NOTE-BOOK OF A NATURALIST. 71 



be doubled, as in tbe moist African valleys which know 

 no frost ; the numbers of its inhabitants would 1 )e in- 

 creased, and their lives prolonged; for a great abundance 

 of the aged infirm of mankind, as well as many birds 

 and animals, are destroyed by severe continued frosts in 

 this climate. 



And thus man proposes. See what he would do if he 

 had the direction of the clerk of the weather-office ! 

 Our poetic philosopher, however, omits to tell us how he 

 would dispose of the superfluous population of long-livers 

 in this Eden, or how the tropical temperature would suit 

 hyperborean constitutions. In such a paradise, threescore 

 would be no burden, and all the gay gi-andsires would 

 frisk as in the celebrated Herefordshire May dance, in 

 which figured eight chosen men, ' whose ages counted 

 together made eight hundred yeers compleat, so that 

 what one wanted of a hundred, the other exceeded a 

 hundred as much.' Our noble ladies would emulate 

 ' the Countesse of Desmond, who lived in the yeer 1589, 

 and after : she married in the dayes of Edward the 

 fourth ; Verulam saith, she thrice renewed her teeth, and 

 lived a hundred and fourty yeers.' * 



All this looks charming upon paper, but, depend upon 

 it, the winds are best in the hand of the Great Anemo- 



* Jonston, 1657 : who adds, ' Epimenides of Crete lived 150 

 yeers; Gorgias Siculus, a rhetorician, 108; Hippocrates, 114; 

 Tereutia, wife of Cicero, 103; Clodia, daughter of Ofilius, 115, 

 though when she was young she had borne fifteen childi-en. What 

 shall I say of Luceia or Galeria Copiola? She lived not a little 

 more than a hundred yeers ; for it is reported that for a hundred 

 yeers she played the jester upon the stage : it may be, at first she 

 acted the maid's part, and at last an old wive's. Isra, the player 

 and dancer, was in her youthfull dayes brought upon the stage : 

 how old she was then is not known, but after 99 yeers from that 

 time she was again brought upon the Theater, not to act her 

 part, but to be showed as a miracle; when Pompey the Great 

 dedicated the Theatre. Also she was again shewed at the sports 



