Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1896-05-16
LONGEVITY OF ANIMALS,
Some Supposed to Live for Hundreds
of Years.

of Years.
An article in the Journal d'HySiene
Paris), translated for the Literary Digest
says:
Man lives to all ages, but in the animal
kingdom, on the contrary, the duration Of
life is almost exactly equal for all indi-
Vlduals Of the same species. But we can
know with exactness the real duration of
life only for animals in servitude; we do
not know whether it is the same in the
savage state. Rabbits and guinea pigs live
seven years: squirrels and hares, eight;
cats. nine or ten; dogs, ten or twelve;
foxes. fourteen to sixteen; cattle, fifteen to
eighteen; bears and wolves twenty; the
rhinoceros, twenty-five; the ass and the
horse, twenty-five to thirty; the lion thir-
ty to forty Ia lion in the London Geological
Gardens reached the age of seventy years.;
the camel, forty. The length of life of the
elephant is uncertain: according to Aris-
totle, Button and Cuvier, it lives two CEN
turtles; some authors say even four or five.
After his victory over Porus, Alexander
consecrated to the sun an elephant that had
fought for the Indian monarch, and gave
1t the name of Ajax; then, having attached
an inscription to it, he set it at liberty; the
animal was found $50 years later. The an
clients attributed to the stag a fabulous
length Of life. but Aristotle observes that
what Is reported on this subject has no
stag takes five or six years to attain full
growth and should live seven times this
period: that is. thirty-fve or forty years.
Though precise observations are wanting.
we know that fishes, especially the large
species, live very long time. According
to Bacon, cells reach sixty years. Carps
have been known to live at least $50 years,
and they then seemed to Button as lively
and agile as ordinary carp. Dolphins stur-
geons and sharks live more than a century
and attain huge size. Pixies have been
seen weighing 1000 pounds, which indicates
very long existence. A pike caught at
Kaisers-Lautern in 1897 was nineteen feet
long and weighed $50 pounds; it bore in it's
gills copper ring with an Inscription stat
ing that it had been put in the pond of
Lantern by order of the Emperor Frederick
IL; that Is, 261 years before. Whale fishers
have exterminated the huge whales of the
polar seas; those that were formerly net
with were of prodigious dimensions. 1t is
supposed, with some probability, that they
live several centuries, and that they may
even reach an age of 1000 years. The lon
gevity of fish is attributed to the long
duration of the development, to their low
temperature and to their feeble vitality.
"On the other hand, we meet another
class of animals whose passions are lively,
whose vitality is very active, and who still
live long time-we mean birds. But it is
not known with any degree Of precision
how long these live, except that their lon
gevity Is great. We see the same swallows
returning to their accustomed nest for
considerable number Of years. An eagle
y.
According to Button, the life of the crow
Is los years, and no observation authorizes
us to attribute to it, with Hesiod, 1000
years A paroquet brought to Florence in
1888 by the Princess Provere d'Urbin when
she went there to espouse the Grand Duke
Ferdinand, was then at least twenty years
old and lived nearly 100 more. A naturalist
whose testimony cannot be doubted, Will
loughby, had certain proof that a goose liv-
ed a century; and Button did not hesitate
to conclude that the swans life is longer
yet: some authors give 1t two and even
three centuries. Mallerton possessed the
skeleton of a swan that had lived 3O7
years. This is quite enough to prove that
among the larger animals, and also espe-
cially among birds, the duration of life,
relatively to their bulk and height, is very
long; 1t Is, on the contrary, very short with
insects; many Of these live less than a
month. rarely a few years, while the life
of the ephemerids is but seven to twelve
hours, and in this brief space they accom-
plish the principal functions that nature
requires of organized bodies; they are
born, reproduce and die"