Public ledger. [volume] (Memphis, Tenn.) 1865-1893, 1867-09-25
Increase Of Human Life.

fishes could 90 on increasing at the nat.
ural rate without being disturbed by ex.
traneous causes, they would soon fill the
ocean and all its tributaries. But they
are subject to various accidents that
keep them from increasing at their nat
ural rate The same thing may be said
Of various animals and insects, as some
of them are so prolific that but for the
accidents that check their natural in
crease, they would fill both the earth and
air with their progeny. 1t is the same,
but of course TO much smaller extent,
with the human race, and one OF the
most interesting applications OF this
subject, is to the increase of the popula'
tion OF the earth. We saw calculation
the other day, the result of which was,
that from single married pair, it might
be fairly calculated in five hundred years
there would be four millions and upwards
Of descendants. Supposing that number
to be multiplied only one million fold in
the next five hundred years, there would
be about four times as many inhabitants
as are at present on the globe, as the
natural increase of but one thousand
years. Three.quarters of those might be
dead, and yet in fifteen hundred years
from the beginning there ought to be
more than a million times as many in
habitants on the globe in the last five
hundred years, as there are now on the
earth. Such was the calculation, but we
do not vouch for its accuracy even as a
calculation.
There are many restricting circum
stances, however, limiting the rate Of
increase. Poverty is one great restrict
ing circumstance. In Orissa, one.fourth
of the whole inhabitants are supposed,
or said to have been swept away in a
single year. War keeps down the popu-
lation in many countries. The North
American Indians had been decreasing
through strife for centuries before the
discovery of America by Columbus.
Particular diseases seem specially to
affect certain tribes, and all peculiarities
of habit at last have to be compensated
for by radical alteration, or they
become the death warrant of those who
do not reform. The families of men of
genius are singuarly shortlived; indeed,
there is a peculiar fneness of suseepti-
bility in the nervous systems of many
which marks them as members of de-
caying stock The inhabitants of the
Sandwich Islands are rapidly dying out,
chiefly perhaps, through contact with a
superior race, Indeed, it would often
seem that if inferior races, after leaving
and increasing, when let alone, yet
brought in contact with superior race,
die of, killed equally by their vices,
their diseases, their superior arms in
war and arts in peace. Without intend.
ing it, the superior race either destroy
the inferior or elevate it.
A few families increase for few gem
erations very rapidly and rise in in.
auence, because they form a superior
stock, until some habit or vice or pecu.
liarity of employment or disposition in
lures the race and renders them inferior,
and then they decline.
There was celebrated sort of apple
introduced in England about hundred
and fifty years ago, from single graft,
| and it was extent, on account OF its supe.
riority. All at once, few years ago, all
these trees decayed and died, and the
kind could only be restored by growing
| fresh trees from the seed-the fibre OF
the wood was worn out. And 30 there
is in many a family some principle Of
vital energy that distinguishes It for q
few generations and then dies out, and
often times the family with it, The
Chinese race has continued longest on
the same SOIL of any race we know of.
But the Indo-Germania race has clearly
by its native strength and superiority,
overrun Hindostan to the south of its
native mountains, and all Europe to the
west, destroying the aboriginal races Of
Europe and Asia almost before the birth
of history, and carrying and leaving
traces of this in the tongues of all the
more energetic nations Of the earth.
individuals, families, nations, races, rise
to the top through force of constitution,
or character, or goodness; flower like
those water plants which rise to the sur
face blossom and then die down when
their strength is spent, TO make way for
others. Every true thought in science
or in morals is a power which elevates
those who possess it. Men are governed
by ideas, and those who have the most
comprehensive views of life, last longest
at the top. Those who have the most OF
what is required for the times rise most
suddenly even if they dc not ast-Phtt-
ddelphiG Ledger.