The morning news. [volume] (Savannah, Ga.) 1887-1900, 1894-07-01
THE LIMIT OF SIZE IN ANIMALS.
Entered on It's DeclineP
From the London Snectator

EIOul the London spectator.
The largest pair of horses shown in the
cart-horse parade last Monday were two
bays DIVIDED by the Thames Bank disti-
lery. These gigantic animals stood is
hands and probably weighed at least a
ton each, and were capable of drawing a
weight OF OVerofOur tons in addition to
their driver. Compared withthe average
size of the nearest approach to the wild
horse existing the tarpan of the khirgiz
Steppes-for the animal which Preivalski
claimed to have discovered in the high
lands of GObl is too like a wild ass
TO be accepted as the primitive an
cestor of the horse until more evil
dence is forthcoming than is at
present available from such remote aud
inaccessible reasons-these mammoth
horses show an increase of about one
third In hight, and three-quarters in bulk
and weight as the result of human effort
directed mainly to the increase of size in
Just proportion in a particular animal.
The natural inference from this fact is a
doubt whether the limit of size which ma
ture seems TO have set to the growth of
particular species is really as fixed and
arbitrary as might appear from the eX-
perence of ages, even in cases where the
conditions are more favorable to their
perfect development than are the Asian
general weight of what is called
"palFontolOgical' evidence seems to favor
the last suppOsition. Take, for example
the gigantic tortoises, one of the last
members of whose respected family died
at Colombo the other day, at the age Of at
least 100, and whose epitaph was written
by DR. Guuther in the Times. DR.. Gun
Their has always had true naturalist's
sympathy for these last survivors of a
race whose unwieldy bulk recalls the
days when the gigantic sons of earth
fought with gods, and whose strength
suggested to the fancy of eastern cos
mogenlsts the picture of the tortoise bear
ing the world upon its back. When they
have completed their allotted century or
so of blameless life they become their own
monuments in a chelonian Valhalla at
South kensington, and dedicate them
selves in little vOtive tablets to the musing
reflections OF mushroom humanity There
are exhibited the remains of the great
tortoise of Aldabra, a small uninhabited
island in the Indian Ocean, northwest of
Madagascar. 1t was quite young, it's
known age being only 50 years, and it was
still growing at the time of its death :;
but it weighed $40 pounds, and its legs
are like those of a small rhinoceros.
Compared with this, the tOrtoises from
the Galapagos islands, in the Pacific,
whose strange solitary existence is so
curiously described by Darwin, are mere
dwarfs, the largest having only weighed
POO pounds but the contrast in size be-
tween these surviving giants and the
dwarf scale of the many forms which
seem destined TO survive and flourish
down TO the tiny "tortoisettes" no bigger
than watch, would even il these creatures
stood alone as examples of the dwindlipg
the tendency of species be enough 10 sug-
gest that the limit of animal
|
acme and entered on its de-
cine. The evidence of the gigantic
forms which fill the long galleries of the
museum seems TO point to the same con-
clusion. Those creatures for whose mon
strous bones existing life affords no par
allel, except to the instructed mind of the
biologist. skeletons like those of the gil
gantic sloths, merely present themselves
as OBJ ects of wonder without suggesting
comparison. But the skull of the ele-
plant found in the Sewalk hills of India,
with tusks twelve feet long, like the limbs
of tree and the horns of the Irish deer,
which stood two feet higher at the Shout
der than the largest waplti of the Rocky
MOnntains-remains of creatures ideut-
ical in character with those which
now frequent the regions they
once inhabited-seem visible evidence Of
a steady and universal decline of which
instances might be multiplied without
number The theory that great size was
in itself bar to the well-being Of the
giant species is an easy if not a wholly
satisfactory means of accounting for the
degeneration, for the failure of food can
hardly have been such in the Indian
forests for instance, as to account for the
dwindling of forms like the "Elephas
ganesa" into the smaller but still enor-
nous bulk of the herds which still sur
vive and multiply IN the jungles of Hin
dOStan.