32. The dunghill cock is venereous, martial, | water, is found to last longest, sometimes to forty and but of a short life; a crank bird, having also years; he is a ravener, of a flesh somewhat dry white flesh. and firm.

33. The Indian cock, commonly called the 46. But the carp, bream, trench, eel, and the turkey cock, lives not much longer than the dung-like, are not held to live above ten years. hill cock; an angry bird, and hath exceeding white flesh.

49. Crocodiles are reported to be exceeding long-lived, and are famous for the times of their growth, for that they, amongst all other creatures, are thought to grow during their whole life. They are of those creatures that lay eggs, raven37. The sparrow is noted to be of a very short ous, cruel, and well fenced against the waters. life; and it is imputed in the males to their lasci-Touching the other kinds of shell-fish, we find viousness. But the linnet, no bigger in body nothing certain how long they live. than the sparrow, hath been observed to have lived twenty years.

10. Milder creatures are not long-lived, as the sheep and dove; for choler is as the whetstone and spur to many functions in the body.

3. The first breeding of creatures is ever mate- | lived, for it shows that nature finished her periods rial, either to their hurt or benefit. And, there- by larger circles. fore, it stands with reason, that the lesser compression, and the more liberal alimentation of the young one in the womb, should confer much to long life. Now, this happens when either the young ones are brought forth successively, as in birds; or when they are single birth, as in creatures bearing but one at a burden.

4. But long bearing in the womb makes for length of life three ways. First, for that the young one partakes more of the substance of the mother, as hath been said. Secondly, that it comes forth more strong and able. Thirdly, that it undergoes the predatory force of the air later. Besides, it shows that nature intendeth to finish their periods by larger circles. Now, though oxen, and sheep, which are borne in the womb about six months, are but short-lived, that happens for other causes.

5. Feeders upon grass and mere herbs are but short livers, and creatures feeding upon flesh, or seeds, or fruits, long livers, as some birds are. As for harts, which are long-lived, they take the one-half of their meat (as men use to say) from above their heads; and the goose, besides grass, findeth something in the water and stubble to feed upon.

6. We suppose that a good clothing of the body maketh much to long life; for it fenceth and armeth against the intemperances of the air, which do wonderfully assail and decay the body; which benefit birds especially have. Now, that sheep, which have so good fleeces, should be so short-lived, that is to be imputed to diseases, whereof that creature is full, and to the bare eating of grass.

7. The seat of the spirits, without doubt, is principally the head, which, though it be usually understood of the animal spirits only, yet this is all in all. Again, it is not to be doubted but the spirits do most of all waste and prey upon the body, so that when they are either in greater plenty, or in greater inflammation and acrimony, there the life is much shortened. And, therefore, I conceive a great cause of long life in birds to be the smallness of their heads in comparison of their bodies; for even men, which have very great heads, I suppose to be the shorter livers.

8. I am of opinion that carriage is, of all other motions, the most helpful to long life, which I also noted before. Now, there are carried waterfowls upon the water, as swans; all birds in their flying, but with a strong endeavour of their limbs; and fishes, of the length of whose lives we have no certainty.

9. Those creatures which are long before they come to their perfection, (not speaking of growth in stature only, but of other steps to maturity, as man puts forth, first, his teeth, next, the signs of puberty, then his beard, and so forward,) are long

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11. Creatures whose flesh is more duskish, are longer lived than those that have white flesh; for it showeth that the juice of the body is more firm, and less apt to dissipate.

12. In every corruptible body quantity maketh much to the conservation of the whole; for a great fire is longer in quenching, a small portion of water is sooner evaporated, the body of a tree withereth not so fast as a twig. And, therefore, generally, (I speak it of species, not of individuals,) creatures that are large in body are longer lived than those that are small, unless there be some other potent cause to hinder it.

Alimentation or Nourishment; and the way of
Nourishing.

To the fourth article. The history.

1. Nourishment ought to be of an inferior nature, and more simple substances than the thing nourished. Plants are nourished with the earth and water, living creatures with plants, man with living creatures. There are also certain creatures feeding upon flesh, and man himself takes plants into a part of his nourishment; but man and creatures feeding upon flesh are scarcely nourished with plants alone; perhaps fruit or grains, baked or boiled, may, with long use, nourish them; but leaves, or plants, or herbs, will not do it, as the order of Foliatanes showed by experience.

2. Over-great affinity or consubstantiality of the nourishment to the thing nourished, proveth not well; creatures feeding upon herbs touch no flesh; and of creatures feeding upon flesh, few of them eat their own kind. As for men which are cannibals, they feed not ordinarily upon man's flesh, but reserve it as a dainty, either to serve their revenge upon their enemies, or to satisfy their appetite at some times. So the ground is best sown with seed growing elsewhere, and men do not use to graft or inoculate upon the same stock.

3. By how much the more the nourishment is better prepared, and approacheth nearer in likeness to the thing nourished, by so much the more are plants more fruitful, and living creatures in better liking and plight; for a young slip or cion is not so well nourished if it be pricked into the ground, as if it be grafted into a stock agreeing with it in nature, and where it finds the nourishment already digested and prepared; neither (as is reported) will the seed of an onion, or some such like, sown in the bare earth, bring forth so large a fruit as if it be put into another onion, which is a new kind of grafting into the root or

under ground. Again, it hath been found out | or some other way than by the stomach, then the lately, that a slip of a wild tree, as of an elm, weakness of concoction, which is incident to old oak, ash, or such like, grafted into a stock of the same kind, will bring forth larger leaves than those that grow without grafting. Also men are not nourished so well with raw flesh as with that which hath passed the fire.

are extant, as touching long life; for their kings which reigned longest did not exceed fifty, or five-and-fifty years; which is no great matter, seeing many at this day attain to those years. But the Arcadian kings are fabulously reported to have lived very long. Surely that country was mountainous, full of flocks of sheep, and brought forth most wholesome food, notwithstanding, seeing Pan was their god, we may conceive that all things about them were panic and vain, and subject to fables.

7. Numa, King of the Romans, lived to eighty years; a man peaceable, contemplative, and much devoted to religion. Marcus Valerius Corvinus saw a hundred years complete, there being betwixt his first and sixth consulship forty-six years; a man valorous, affable, popular, and always fortunate.

lived three hundred years; if so be the war of the we find nothing of moment in those works that Israelites against the tribe of Benjamin (in which expedition Phineas consulted with) were performed in the same order of time in which the history hath ranked it; he was a man of a most eminent zeal. Joshua, a martial man and an excellent leader, and evermore victorious, lived to the hundred and tenth year of his life. Caleb was his contemporary, and seemeth to have been of as great years. Ebud, the judge, seems to have been no less than a hundred years old, in regard that after the victory over the Moabites, the Holy Land had rest under his government eighty years; he was a man fierce and undaunted, and one that in a sort neglected his life for the good of his people. 4. Job lived, after the restoration of his happiness, a hundred and forty years, being, before his afflictions, of that age that he had sons at man's estate; a man politic, eloquent, charitable, and the example of patience. Eli, the priest, lived ninety-eight years; a corpulent man, calm of disposition, and indulgent to his children. But Elizæus, the prophet, may seem to have died when he was above a hundred years old; for he is found to have lived after the assumption of Elias sixty years; and at the time of that as-years; the matter is mixed with a prodigious sumption he was of those years, that the boys mocked him by the name of baldhead; a man vehement and severe, and of an austere life, and a contemner of riches. Also Isaiah, the prophet, seemeth to have been a hundred years old; for he is found to have exercised the function of a prophet seventy years together, the years both of his beginning to prophecy, and of his death, being uncertain; a man of an admirable eloquence, an evangelical prophet, full of the promises of God of the New Testament, as a bottle with sweet wine.

8. Solon of Athens, the lawgiver, and one of the seven wise men, lived above eighty years, a man of high courage, but popular, and affected to his country; also learned, given to pleasures, and a soft kind of life. Epimenides, the Cretian, is reported to have lived a hundred and fifty-seven

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relation, for fifty-seven of those years he is said to have slept in a cave. Half an age after, Xenophon, the Colophonian, lived a hundred and two years, or rather more; for at the age of twentyfive years he left his country, seventy-seven complete years he travelled, and after that returned but how long he lived after his return appears not; a man no less wandering in mind than in body; for his name was changed for the madness of his opinions, from Xenophanes to Xenomanes; a man, no doubt, of a vast conceit, and that minded nothing but infinitum.

to eighty years; a poet of a high fancy, singular in his conceits, and a great adorer of the gods. Sophocles, the Athenian, attained to the like age; a lofty tragic poet, given over wholly to writing, and neglectful of his family.

5. Tobias, the elder, lived a hundred and fifty- 9. Anacreon, the poet, lived eighty years, and eight years, the younger a hundred and twenty-somewhat better, a man lascivious, voluptuous, seven; merciful men, and great alms-givers. It and given to drink. Pindarus, the Theban, lived seems, in the time of the captivity, many of the Jews who returned out of Babylon were of great years, seeing they could remember both temples, (there being no less than seventy years betwixt them,) and wept for the unlikeness of them. Many ages after that, in the time of our Saviour, lived old Simeon, to the age of ninety; a devout man, and full both of hope and expectation. Into the same time also fell Anna, the prophetess, who could not possibly be less than a hundred years old, for she had been seven years a wife, about eighty-four years a widow, besides the years of her virginity, and the time that she lived after her prophecy of our Saviour; she was a holy woman, and passed her days in fastings and prayers.

6. The long lives of men mentioned in heathen authors have no great certainty in them; both for the intermixture of fables, whereunto those kind of relations were very prone, and for their false calculation of years. Certainly of the Egyptians

10. Artaxerxes, King of Persia, lived ninety-four years; a man of a dull wit, averse to the despatch of business, desirous of glory, but rather of ease. At the same time lived Agesilaus, King of Sparta, to eighty-four years of age; a moderate prince, as being a philosopher among kings, but, notwithstanding, ambitious, and a warrior, and no less stout in war than in business.

11. Gorgias, the Sicilian, was a hundred and eight years old; a rhetorician, and a great boaster of his faculty, one that taught youth for profit. He had seen many countries, and a little before his death said, that he had done nothing worthy of blame since he was an old man. Protagoras, of Abdera, saw ninety years of age. This man

13. Terentia, Cicero's wife, lived a hundred and three years; a woman afflicted with many crosses; first, with the banishment of her husband, then with the difference betwixt them; lastly, with his last fatal misfortune. She was also oftentimes vexed with the gout. Luceia must needs exceed a hundred by many years, for it is said, that she acted a whole hundred years upon the stage, at first, perhaps, representing the person of some young girl, at last of some decrepit old woman. But Galeria Copiola, a player also, and a dancer, was brought upon the stage as a novice, in what year of her age is not known; but ninety-nine years after, at the dedication of the theatre by Pompey the Great, she was shown upon the stage, not now for an actress, but for a wonder. Neither was this all; for after that, in the solemnities for the health and life of Augustus, she was shown upon the stage the third time.

was likewise a rhetorician, but professed not so much to teach the liberal arts, as the art of governing commonwealths and states; notwithstanding he was a great wanderer in the world, no less than Gorgias. Isocrates, the Athenian, lived ninety-eight years; he was a rhetorician also, but an exceeding modest man, one that shunned the public light, and opened his school only in his own house. Democritus, of Abdera, reached to a hundred and nine years; he was a great philosopher, and, if ever any man amongst the Grecians, a true naturalist, a surveyor of many countries, but much more of nature; also a diligent searcher into experiments, and (as Aristotle objected against him) one that followed similitudes more than the laws of arguments. Diogenes, the Sinopean, lived ninety years; a man that used liberty towards others, but tyranny over himself, a coarse diet, and of much patience. Zeno, of Citium, lacked about two years of a hundred; a 14. There was another actress, somewhat inman of a high mind, and a contemner of other ferior in age, but much superior in dignity, which men's opinions; also of a great acuteness, but lived well near ninety years, I mean Livia Julia yet not troublesome, choosing rather to take Augusta, wife to Augustus Cæsar, and mother to men's minds than to enforce them. The like Tiberius. For, if Augustus his life were a play, whereof afterwards was in Seneca. Plato, the (as himself would have it, when as upon his Athenian, attained to eighty-one years; a man death-bed he charged his friends they should give of a great courage, but yet a lover of ease, in his him a plaudit after he was dead,) certainly this notions sublime, and of a fancy, neat and deli- lady was an excellent actress, who could carry it cate in his life, rather calm than merry, and one so well with her husband by a dissembled obethat carried a kind of majesty in his countenance. | dience, and with her son by power and authority. Theophrastus, the Eressian, arrived at eighty-five A woman affable, and yet of a matronal carriage, years of age; a man sweet for his eloquence, sweet for the variety of his matters, and who selected the pleasant things of philosophy, and let the bitter and harsh go. Carneades, of Cyrena, many years after, came to the like age of eightyfive years; a man of a fluent eloquence, and one who, by the acceptable and pleasant variety of his knowledge, delighted both himself and others. But Orbilius, who lived in Cicero's time, no philosopher or rhetorician, but a grammarian, attained to a hundred years of age; he was first a soldier, then a schoolmaster; a man by nature tart both in his tongue and pen, and severe towards his scholars.

12. Quintius Fabius Maximus was augur sixtythree years, which showed him to be above eighty years of age at his death; though it be true, that in the augurship nobility was more respected than age; a wise man, and a great deliberator, and in all his proceedings moderate, and not without affability severe. Masinissa, King of Numidia, lived ninety years, and being more than eightyfive, got a son; a daring man, and trusting upon his fortune, who in his youth had tasted of the inconstancy of fortune, but in his succeeding age was constantly happy. But Marcus Porcius Cato lived above ninety years of age; a man of an iron body and mind; he had a bitter tongue, and loved to cherish factions; he was given to husbandry, and was to himself and his family a physician. VOL. III.-61

pragmatical, and unholding her power. But Junia, the wife of Caius Cassius, and sister of Marcus Brutus, was also ninety years old, for she survived the Philippic battle sixty-four years; a magnanimous woman, in her great wealth happy, in the calamity of her husband, and near kinsfolks, and in a long widowhood unhappy, notwithstanding much honoured of all.

15. The year of our Lord seventy-six, falling into the time of Vespasian, is memorable; in which we shall find, as it were, a calendar of long-lived men; for that year there was a taxing : (now, a taxing is the most authentical and truest informer touching the ages of men;) and in that part of Italy, which lieth betwixt the Apennine mountains and the river Po, there were found a hundred and four-and-twenty persons that either equalled or exceeded a hundred years of age: namely, of a hundred years, just fifty-four persons; of a hundred and ten, fifty seven persons; of a hundred and five-and-twenty, two only; of a hundred and thirty, four men; of a hundred and five-andthirty, or seven-and-thirty, four more; of a hundred and forty, three men. Besides these, Parma in particular afforded five, whereof three fulfilled a hundred and twenty years, and two a hundred and thirty. Brussels afforded one of a hundred and twenty five years old. Placentia one, aged a hundredthirtyand one. Faventia one woman, aged one hundred thirty-and-two. A certain town, then called Vel

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