298 LONGEVITY OF ANIMALS. 



times a oay." " The oldest people in the vicinity remember 

 Francisco as being always, from their earliest recollection, 

 much older than themselves ; arid a Mr. Fuller, who recently 

 died here between eighty and ninety years of age, thought Fran- 

 cisco was one hundred and forty." " He is really a most re- 

 markable and interesting old man : there is nothing either in 

 his person or dress of the negligence and squalidness of extreme 

 age, especially when not in elevated circumstances ; on the 

 contrary, he is agreeable and attractive, and were he dressed 

 in a superior manner, and placed in a handsome, well-furnish- 

 ed apartment, he would be a most beautiful old man." * 



The general causes of death have already been mentioned. 

 But in women the operation of these causes is frequently re- 

 tarded. In the female sex, the bones, the cartilages, the 

 muscles, as well as every other part of the body, are softer 

 and less solid than those of men ; neither are they generally 

 so much subjected to bodily exertions. Their constituent 

 parts, accordingly, require more time in hardening to that 

 degree which occasions death. Women, of course, ought to 

 live longer than men. This reasoning is confirmed by the 

 bills of mortality; for, upon consulting them, it appears, that, 

 after women have passed a certain time, they live much longer 

 than men who have reached the same period. The duration 

 of the lives of animals may, in some measure, be estimated 

 by the time occupied in their growth. An animal, or even 

 a plant, as we learn from experience, which acquires matu- 

 rity in a short time, perishes much sooner than those which 

 are longer in arriving at that period. In the human spe- 

 cies, when individuals grow with uncommon rapidity, they 

 generally die young. This circumstance seems to have 

 given rise to the common proverbial expression, "soon ripe, 

 soon rotten." Man grows in stature till he is sixteen or 

 eighteen years of age ; but the thickness of his body is not 

 completely unfolded before that of thirty. Dogs acquire their 

 full length in one year ; but their growth in thickness is not 

 finished till the end of the second. A man, who continues to 



* Silliman's Tour between Hartford and Quebec, in the summer of 1819, p. 172. 

 'This old man has, I believe, since died. In the 10th Vol. 2d Series of the Massa- 

 chusetts Historical Collections, there is an account of a number of instances of lon- 

 gevity which have been known to occur in New Hampshire. Within the ten years 

 from 1810 to 1820, eighty persons are recorded who died above the asre of ninety, 

 twenty-nine of whom reached or exceeded the age of one hundred. Besides these 

 there have died in the state, within the last century, one person of one hundred and 

 twenty one of one hundred and sixteen one of one hundred and fiftien one of 

 one hundred and ten one of one hundred and eight one of one hundred and seven 

 one of one hundred and six several of one hundred and five, and there were liv 

 ing, in 1822, at Chesterfield, a woman of one hundred and five, and at Bow, a man of 

 one hundred and twelve. The population of New Hampshire, in 1810, was 214,460 

 and in 1820, 243,136.' 



