770 DURATION OF LIFE IN 



mean duration of life among Europeans has been 

 found nearly the same as in England; while it 

 is said that the Caffres also, frequently arrive at 

 the age of one hundred and upwards. Such, 

 however, is not the case with either natives or 

 foreigners in climates of perpetual summer, if 

 we except a few small islands, which are exempt 

 from extremes of temperature, and the impure 

 air arising from putrefaction, combustion, and 

 the respiration of animals. For example, life is 

 longer in Bermuda, Barbadoes, and some other 

 small islands, than in the same latitudes of 

 America ; while in Madeira and St. Helena, the 

 average is said to be from forty -eight and a half 

 to fifty years. From the facts collected by M. 

 Moreau de Jonnes, as presented in the following 

 table, we may form a general, though imperfect 

 notion, in regard to the influence of a tropical 

 climate on the mean duration of life among 

 natives and foreigners. (See Quetelet on Man, 

 pp. 27, 45.) 



* It is stated by R. D. Thomson in a recent work on Digestion, 

 that among the Mahometans and Moguls of Calcutta, the mean 

 value of life is thirty-six years ; among the English twenty-eight 

 years ; the Armenians twenty-five ; the Hindoos sixteen ; and the 

 native Christians fourteen, making an average of nearly twenty- 

 four years. 



