REPRODUCTION. 671 



tional cases of accumulation of non-working adipose tissue) 

 remains about the same until the climacteric. After that 

 there is often an increase of weight for several years due 

 mainly to increased formation of fat; a man's weight usually 

 slowly increases until forty. 



As old age comes on a general decline sets in, the rib car- 

 tilages become calcined, and lime salts are laid down in the 

 arterial walls, which thus lose their elasticity ; the refracting 

 media of the eye become more or less opaque ; the physiological 

 irritability of the sense-organs in general diminishes ; and fatty 

 degeneration, diminishing their working power, occurs in 

 many tissues. In the brain we find signs of less plasticity ; the 

 youth in whom few lines of least resistance have been firmly 

 established is ready to accept novelties and form new associa- 

 tions of ideas ; but the longer he lives, the more difficult does 

 this become to him. A man past middle life may do good, 

 or even his best work, but almost invariably in some line of 

 thought which he has already accepted: it is extremely rare 

 for an old man to take up a new study or change his views, 

 philosophical, scientific, or other. Hence, as we live, we all 

 tend to lag behind the rising generation. 



Death. After the prime of life the tissues dwindle (or at 

 least the most important ones) as they increased in childhood ; 

 it is conceivable that, without death, this process might occur 

 until the Body was reduced to its original microscopic dimen- 

 sions. 



Before any great diminution takes place, however, a break- 

 down occurs somewhere, the enfeebled community of organs 

 and tissues forming the man is unable to meet the contingen- 

 cies of life, and death supervenes. " It is as natural to die as 

 to be born," Bacon wrote long since; but though we all 

 know it, few realize the fact until the summons comes. To 

 the popular imagination the prospect of dying is often asso- 

 ciated with thoughts of extreme suffering ; personifying life, 

 men picture a forcible and agonizing rending of it, as an 

 entity, from the bodily frame with which it is associated. As 

 a matter of fact, death is probably rarely associated with any 

 immediate suffering. The sensibilities are gradually dulled us 

 the end approaches; the nervous tissues, with the rest, loye 

 their functional capacity, and, before the heart ceases to beat, 

 the individual has commonly lost consciousness. 



The actual moment of death is hard to define : that of the- 



