60 Human Longevity. 



looms, under the superintendence of an Englishman well 

 skilled in the art. What amount of machinery he has we are 

 unable to say, but we are informed that he has more than 

 they have at Mansfield, and is still increasing it. 



From the preceding remarks it is evident that our country 

 is well adapted to the culture of silk, and that ii can be man- 

 ufactured here with the same facilities as it can in Europe ; 

 that there is no branch of agriculture which can be pursued 

 that is more lucrative than this. Suffice it here to say, that 

 like the culture of the vine, a degree of perseverance and 

 enthusiasm seems to pervade all the votaries of this delightful 

 pursuit, and a warm and friendly interchange of views and 

 sentiments exists among them, which has been comparatively 

 unknown in any other species of culture. Similar sentiments 

 and like prospects of success seem to pervade all parts of 

 our country when it has received merited attention, and the 

 daily increasing devotion to the subject will ere long cause 

 each section of our Republic to respond to the other. 



HUMAN LONGEVITY. 



[From the Encyclopaedia Americana.] 



The extreme limit of human life, and the means of attaining 

 it, have been a subject of general interest, both in ancient 

 and modern times, and the physiologist and political econo- 

 mist are alike attracted by the inquiry. It is for the student 

 of biblical antiquities to decide in what sense we are to un- 

 derstand the word year m the scriptural accounts of the ante- 

 diluvians; whether it signifies a revolution of the sun or of 

 the moon, or whether their extreme longevity is only the 

 creation of tradition. In the sense which we now give the 

 the word year, the accounts would make the constitution of 

 men at the period referred to, very different from what it is at 

 present, or has been, at any period from which observations 

 on the duration of human life have been transmitted to us. 

 The results of all tliese observations, in regard to the length 

 of life in given circumstances, do not essentially differ. 

 Pliny affords some valuable statistical information, if ac- 

 curate, regarding the period at which he lived, obtained 

 from an official, and, apparently, authentic source — the 

 census, directed by the emperor Vespasian, in the year 76 

 of the Christian era. From this we learn that, at the 



