Thomas Whittington, who died at Hillingdon, Middlesex, in 1804, aged 104, retained his faculties to the last, and could walk two or three miles; yet he was a great drinker, gin being the only fluid he took into his stomach, and of this a pint and a half daily, until a fortnight of his death. He remembered William III. and Queen Anne; and in 1745 he conveyed troops and baggage from Uxbridge to London. His father died at exactly the same age (104) as the son, and both lie in Hillingdon churchyard. --------------------- Footnote 50: In the Ashmolean Collection at Oxford is a portrait of Old Parr, presumed to have been painted from the life, and, we believe, not engraved. The portrait by Rubens is well known. Footnote 51: The portrait of Sir Richard Phillips as Sheriff, painted by Saxon, shows him as above described. The picture is of gallery size, and in the possession of his grandson and representative, Mr. Bacon Phillips, M.R.C.S., of Brighton. The bust of Sir Richard, by Turnerelli, conveys a similar _personnel_. ---------------------------- LONGEVITY AND LOCALITIES. With respect to the atmosphere most favourable to health and longevity, Sir John Sinclair says, “More depends upon a current of pure air than mere elevation. There is no place in Scotland, proportionably with its population, where a greater number of aged people are to be found than in the neighbourhood of Loch Lomond.” The purest atmosphere, Sir John maintains, is in the neighbourhood of a small stream running over a rocky or pebbly bottom. Mr. Thomas Bailey, in his _Records of Longevity_, states that “Nottinghamshire has the driest atmosphere of any district in England, the depth of rain which falls there being something like 50 per cent below what falls in Lancashire, Devonshire, and one or two of the northern counties;” yet the records show that it enjoys no superiority, in point of the longevity of its inhabitants, over those moister districts. Hence it is concluded that moderately moist air is most conducive to great age. The reason Hufeland assigns for this is, that moist air, being in part already saturated, has less attractive power over bodies,—that is to say, consumes them less. Besides, in a moist atmosphere there is always more uniformity of temperature, fewer rapid revolutions of heat being possible than in a dry atmosphere. Lastly, an atmosphere somewhat moist keeps the muscular tissue of the body longer pliable, whereas that which is dry or arid brings on much sooner rigidity of the muscles and vessels of the body, and all the characteristics of old age. It is this very dry air, joined with the heat of the sun, which gives to the dried and shrivelled skin of the face of some old men, in the felicitous humour of Charles Dickens, “the appearance of a walnut-shell.”