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boys frequently walked after her in procession | to the village church. William Farr, of Birmingham, died 1770, aged 121. He survived a posterity of one hundred and forty-four persons, and, finding himself without an heir, bequeathed his fortune of £10,000 to charitable uses. James Hatfield died 1770, aged 105. One night, while on duty as a sentinel at Windsor, he heard St. Paul's clock in London, twenty-three miles distant, strike thirteen instead of twelve, and, not being relieved as he expected, he fell asleep. The tardy relief soon arrived and found him in this condition. He was tried by a court-martial; he denied the

the term of his natural life. By the French laws this term is considered to have expired after one hundred years have elapsed. Having served that period, our venerable prisoner of state, at the age of 122, was released and went back to his native village; but of course, like Rip Van Winkle, he was unknown. Yet he had triumphed over laws, bondage, man, time, everything. He returned heart-broken to his galley and died.

The reader will naturally ask for information regarding the aged of the present day. This curiosity it is difficult to satisfy, for statistics are only collected after death, and then they are the product of uncertain gales, floating in to the historian from books of travel, local records, obituary notices, magazines, annual registers, and from the uncertain memories of the living. A large number of such cases are now to be found in the charitable institutions of our land. The United States Census of 1860 mentions the decease of 466 centenarians, of whom 137 were white, 39 free colored, and 290 slaves. One slave died in Alabama aged 130, one in Georgia aged 137, and one Mexican aged 120. Jean Frederick de Waldeck died in Paris, April 29, 1875, aged 109 years, I month, and 14 days. This man has been before the world in some capacity for over ninety years, and it is not so easy to ignore him. He was originally a page of Marie Antoinette. the age of 19 he was with Levaillant exploring in South Africa. In 1788 he was studying art under David and Prud'hon in Paris. He fought under Napoleon in 1794-8 in Italy and in Egypt. In 1819 he was engaged in archæological expeditions in North and South America. In 1837 he published "Voyage Archéologique et Pittoresque dans le Yu

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THE LATE COUNT JEAN FREDERICK DE WALDECK, OF PARIS, AGED 109 YEARS.

At

and his drawings of the ruins of Palenque were published in 1863; he made the lithographs when aged 100. In the Salon of 1869 he exhibited two pictures and entitled them " Loisir du Centenaire." This man could not fail to attract attention, and he became member and honorary member of the principal learned societies of London and Paris. It is difficult to say how Sir G. Cornewall Lewis, were he alive, would treat this case of longevity. We have yet to learn how the incredulous Mr. Thoms, F. S. A.,

charge of sleeping at his post before mid-catan," night, and in defense related the story of St. Paul's clock, a circumstance never known before. His life was thus saved. Mrs. Penny, of Worcestershire, died, aged 99. This lady had a niece living at the time aged 101. Miss Elizabeth Gray died 1856, aged 108. She survived her father one hundred years, and was buried beside a half-brother, who had been dead 128 years. During the last century, a Frenchman, at the age of 21, was sentenced to the galleys at Toulon for

will meet it. Eighteen centuries ago
(with reverence be it remarked) " doubting
Thomas" said: "Except I shall see in his
hands the print of the nails, and put my
finger into the print of the nails, and thrust
my hand into his side, I will not believe." | Court of James the First."

tinued gay and lively in her tastes, dancing
even beyond her hundredth birthday. She
cut three new sets of teeth. Her family be-
ing ruined by rebellion, she made the long
journey to London to seek relief from the

So with the doubting Thoms

of our day. Unless he can search in person the register of birth, marriage and death, and, poring over at every point the records of vital statistics, can meet his man properly indexed, he would state the case not proven.

In the city of New York at the present day resides Captain Frederick Lahrbush, formerly of the British army, said to be aged 109 years, and enjoying good health. A gentleman of the most engaging manners and natural refinement, he receives a large number of visitors, and relates a history of romantic interest. He resides in Third Avenue, and almost every Sabbath, at the Church of the Ascension on Fifth Avenue, the childish treble of his worn out voice may be heard above the worship of the congregation. He rises before five in the morning, and retires shortly after seven in the evening. He is abstemious in his habits, though in the daily practice of eating opium, to which drug, it is believed, he attrib

utes his long life. Captain Lahrbush claims to have fought under Wellington in the Peninsula, and to have witnessed the signing of the famous Treaty of Tilsit, which took place in 1807 (on a raft moored in the River Niemen) between Napoleon, Alexander of Russia, and the King of Prussia. It is but fair to add in regard to this case of longevity that Mr. Thoms has written across its record with an unrelenting hand, and with a pen of iron, and those curious about such matters are referred to his work, "Longevity of Man." Another interesting character is thus described: "The Irish Countess of Desmond fell from a fruit tree, broke her thigh and died in 1609-aged 145 years. She danced at Court with the Duke of Gloucester, after ward Richard the Third. Indeed she con

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CAPT. FREDERICK LAHRBUSH, AGED 109 YEARS.

We may ask, in closing, is it desirable that all men and women should become centenarians? Manifestly not. These shrunken, shriveled relics of a past age, in the knotted and tangled line of whose life personal identity has barely been preserved, would, if familiar to our eyes, produce a depressing effect on the living. Useful lives are to be desired rather than mere length of days.

"Evum implet actis, non segnibus annis."

A quarter or half a century of sleeping existence, feeble superannuation, an exception to the sound laws of health and the rule of accidents, these childish, antiquated people, have long ceased to be a pleasure to themselves or to the world. Their own testimony shows an anxious waiting for their time of

THE COUNTESS OF DESMOND, AGED 145.

release. "Not an hour longer," says one, and another with wearied complaint exclaims: "God, in letting me remain so long upon the earth, seems actually to have forgotten me."

But we have returned to the starting-point of our investigations. Can great age be secured by human endeavor? Probably

not.

The European and the negro, the Chinese and the American, the civilized man and the savage, the rich and the poor, the dweller in cities and he that lives in the | country, differing so much from one another in some respects, all resemble one another in having the same allotment of time to pass from birth to death; and the variations of climate, food and conveniences, seem to have but little to do with the prolongation of life. Abnormal instances of longevity are doubtless the result of a certain bodily and mental predisposition to great age. The man that lives long probably possesses strong natural powers of restoration and healing. These depend more or less for their fulfillment upon a tranquil life, an absence of irritability, and a contented disposition. And let there be added to these a firm reliance on the mercy and wisdom of that Divine Power "in whose hands our breath is, and whose are all our ways."

For the original portraits from which the illustrations of this paper are taken we are indebted to the following sources:-Old Parr, "The World of Wonders; " Parr's Cottage in Shropshire, and Countess of Desmond, "Chambers's Book of Days;" Henry Jenkins, "Bailey's Records of Longevity; " Peter Garden, the " New Wonderful Magazine; " John Rovin and wife, and Peter Zartan," Kirby's Wonderful Museum;" Count Waldeck, the "London Illustrated News." The portrait of Frederick Lahrbush is from a photograph taken in 1875.

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GLASS SPONGES.

THE distinction which our present knowl- | lifeless minerals of the earth are wrought edge enables us to make between the humblest forms of animal and vegetable life is a functional, rather than a chemical or a sensible one. It lies in what they do, rather than in what they are. The lowest representatives of both kingdoms are included under the same general term. Protozoon and protophyte are alike called protoplasm, and appear to possess the same intrinsic qualities.

The practical difference between animal and vegetable life consists in their respective powers of assimilation. Plants take in as nutriment the inorganic elements of earth and air; by the subtle chemistry of nature, in her dark and silent laboratory underground, the

into living tissues, endowed with the capacity for growth and reproduction. Except in the Fungi, this transmutation, of inorganic into organic matter is believed to be accomplished, only under the controlling influence of light. Animal vitality is sustained only by the material thus transmuted; all the solid nutriment necessary for the maintenance of animal life must have been converted into vegetable, or reconverted into animal tissue before it can fulfill its purpose. Man, surrounded by all the wealth of inorganic nature, would perish if there were not everywhere about him millions of busy little alchemists unceasingly at work day and night, transmuting the dead and useless elements ❘ complex and multitudinous, under which

of land and water into the life-sustaining principle. Not only do the lowly grasses and tenderly creeping mosses clothe the earth with beauty as with a garment, but they also supply the conditions of all higher life. Without the unconscious ministry of this lowly vegetable existence, all the high hopes, the spiritual longings, the heroic endeavor of humanity, would have been impossible.

we live are here reduced to two or three; the elements, many and bewildering, which enter into the ordinary statement of the problem, are here eliminated, and yet we are forced to recognize the same vital principle giving functional activity to a mass of structureless jelly which animates the highest organic beings.

When we see this formless life governed by laws, each in itself as inexorable as that which guides the rolling planets, and all in their various combinations as flexile as those which control our human existence, we feel the sense of awe which a whisper from the unseen world might send thrilling through our nerves. We are standing face to face with life stripped of its familiar conditions. It looks us in the eyes as the disembodied ghost of the life now so familiar to us.

The lowest forms of life lie in the shadowy boundary land between the two great kingdoms of organic nature. Even in the physical world the mysterious lore of border land possesses a charm which is wanting to the wide fields of knowledge that have been traversed again and again by human feet. The most curious page in the record of this lowly existence has just been opened to us. The latest investigations into deep-sea life show that the vast area lying beneath the ocean is covered with a simple animal life, boundless in extent and infinite in variety. Under conditions too rigid and severe to ❘tions suggested by those found in the shal

a

B

Until within the last five years our knowledge of deep-sea life was limited to the information given by stray organisms brought up on some fisherman's net, or to specula

****

A

permit the growth of the humblest sea-
weed, these creatures live, and multi-
ply, and die. Far beyond the reach
of light, in a glacial temperature and
under enormous pressure, exists this
wonderful fauna. As we strip the
mystery of vitality of garment after gar-
ment, as its conditions become fewer
and its mode of existence less complex,
the wonder, instead of becoming less,
constantly grows upon the mind. The
human intellect longs to find a com-
mensurate physical cause for the effect
which we call life. When, as in the
higher organic beings, the conditions
are many and the processes compli-
cated, the phenomenon of vitality does
not seem so puzzling; antecedent ap-
pears to bear some sort of proportion to
consequent. The mind rarely troubles
itself to make nice distinctions between
complicated machinery and motive
power. A liberal display of wheel-work
is adequate to account for results with-
out any reference to the initial force.
But as we contemplate the life of the
protozoa, which reign supreme in the
ocean's depths, we see the awful and
mysterious problem presented in its
simplest terms; forms of existence
which are formless, organisms posses-
sing no organs, life contradicting the very
definitions of life and yet performing all
its essential functions. The conditions,

C

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PLATE I. SPICULES OF GLASS SPONGES-MAGNIFIED,

A, spicules of different varieties of Euplectella: a, anchoring filament of E. Aspergillum; b, b, b, spicules of the sarcode; c and d, hexradiate spicules in earliest form; e, the real size of the spicule marked e is

1-300 of an inch in diameter. B, spicules of Tethya. C, varieties of Hyalonema: a, anchoring filament, H. S.; 6, b, b, spicules of sarcode, D, spicules of Hyalonema in situ.

lower water. The tribe of sponges, especially, have, in this way, become familiar to The hints given of their beauty and

us.

L

delicacy have surprised us, but they were, ❘ form the skeleton of the animal, are in its

after all, the merest hints. Explorations into the still cold water of the ocean's profounder depths reveal the fact that what we already knew was but the "margin and remnant of a wonderfully diversified sponge fauna, which appears to extend in endless

variety over the whole bottom of the sea."

The family of sponges has only of late been able to establish itself satisfactorily in life. It had been bandied back and forth between the two great kingdoms of organic nature, figuring now as one of the algæ, and again as a protozoon; but its title to admission into the animal kingdom has at last been made out by aid of the microscope.

This family is divided into three great orders: the silicious, or glass sponges, the calcareous, and the keratose, named from the several minerals of which its skeleton is composed. Our common sponge is rather an insignificant member of the great tribe whose name it bears. It is a sort of poor relation of the sponge family, who goes out to service in foreign parts, but who, like the little maid of the Syrian captain, cannot forbear giving a hint of the wonders of its native land.

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living state clothed with a soft gelatinous flesh technically called sarcode. This is a semi-transparent, jelly-like substance, which dries readily, but whose original condition can be restored by submersion in water. The sarcode was for a long time considered to be a granular jelly; but closer scrutiny has determined the granules to be tiny animal cells, each possessed of a single lash or cilium, which is forever in motion. These ameba-like creatures are immersed in a jelly even more structureless than themselves. Through the mass of the sponge streams of sea water are forever flowing, impelled by the constant and perfectly timed motion of the cilia. The canals through which the water flows are not permanent, though the general direction of the current is always the same, and the main exhalent orifice or osculum remains unchanged. The gases necessary to life are supplied by a gentle perpetual current, which passes through every portion of the sarcode; the organic matter for the maintenance of vitality is supplied by a more vigorous and intermittent flow. Respiration in these formless creatures, as in higher organisms, appears to be the result of involuntary action, while feeding is voluntary.

The sarcode possesses the power of appropriating from the incurrent streams of water not only the air and food it requires, but also the mineral matter which it needs for the rearing of its frame-work. The amount of sarcode, as well as its consistency, varies with the different species, but in all other respects the sponge-animal seems identical. The secretion and deposit of the mineral skeleton by which the three orders are characterized depend wholly upon some subtle and mysterious principle lying back of the region to which chemistry and microscopic investigation can penetrate. If there be a physical cause behind the phenomena, the deeper we investigate the subject the more hopeless seems the search. As chemical tests become more refined, and microscopic investigations more accurate, the facts which are brought to light tend to prove identity in the living animal of the various sponges rather than difference. And yet every reasonable mind must admit some difference in causes which produce results so diverse. If it is not chemical or purely physical, what is it? What right have we to assume a chemical action which is beyond the reach of chemical tests, or a physical peculiarity which baffles the most patient

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