We are of opinion that the Carlisle Table is more likely to represent truly the very old periods of life, not from any greeter quantity 01 materials, but from a better theory having been applied in their forma It has been very common to end tables with the oldest live: uleierved in them t thus the Equitable Table ends at 97, because the latest of the deaths from which it was formed (5144 in number) tool place at that age. This Is not correct in principle, and is the saint thing as if, a pair of dice having been theme a large number of Ono fitly 1 (1,0(W), it should be inferred that no rune of doublets should eve be calculated on of longer duration than these observed .luring course of the throws. lm the CAM of the dice we can calculate before hand what was the chance of longer runs; and in the table of we have nod priori calculation, but only observation of inotances this throws a difficulty in the way, but that difficulty is not properl met by exclusion of all that ban not happened as impossible. For th calculations connected with a 'tie., &c. it is of little consequence because 'sues rarely occur in which the purchasing parties are above 80 ,t which ago the chance of living twenty years is so small, that it would ut much affect the pecuniary results if those who could get over the eriod between 80 and 100 years were afterwards supposed to live for ver. But for the determination of the physical Laws of the duration f life, such termination of the tables at the oldest age of observed eath is wholly inadmissible.
Mr. Babbage has published (` Comparative View of Institutions for he Assurance of Lives, London, 1826; Table X11., Appendix, from :aston'a ' Human Longevity,' Salisbury, 1799) a table formed from 751 persons who attained the age of 100, which we aubjoin, with such dditions as will make it correspond with those given before This table is the necessary consequence of that very large amount of dubious testimony which exists, in various places, upon instances of particular longevity. Looked at separately, there are no means of refuting any one instance; but their united effect is beyond all credibility. The ages of many of these persons must have been ascer tained by their own statements of the earliest public events within their memory, and it is not unlikely that very old persone frequently confuse what they have heard talked about in their infancy with what they have seen themselves. There is also a natural tendency to exaggerate great age. Enough however remains, when every possible allowance has been made for error, to show that the remaining life of a person aged 100 years is not so very small as it is generally believed to bo ; and we strongly suspect that the last 25 years of the Carlisle Table are no exaggeration, but really considerably short of the actual law which prevails among the middle classes of society.