The Portland daily press., 1896-05-23
LONGEVITY OF ANIMALS.
Some Supposed to Live for Hundreds of
Years,

An article in the Journal 1Hygiene
(Pari }. translated for the Literary Di.
gest, says:
Man lives to all ages. but in the ami
NAL kingdom, ON the contrary, the dura-
ton OF life is aim ost exactly equal for all
individuals of the same species. But
we can know with exaotness the real
duration of life only for. animals in servi-
tude; we do not know whether 1t is thu
same In the savage state. Rabbits and
guinea pigs live seven yea rs squirrels and
mares. eight; cats, nine or ten; dogs, ten
or twelve; foxes, fourteen to sixteen;
cattle, fifteen to eighteen; bears and
wolves, twenty; the rhinoceros, twenty
i've: the ass and the horse, twenty-five
to thirty; the lion, thirty to, forty; "a
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-
totie, Button and Cuvier, it lives two
cen turtles; some authors say even four or
i've. After his victory over Porus, Alex
ander oonseorated to the sun an elephant
that had fought for the Indian monarch.
and gave 1T the name of Ajax; then, hay-
ing attached an inscription to it, he SIT
1t at liberty; the animal was found $50
years later. The anoients attributed TO
| the stag fabulous length gof life. fut
Aristotle observes that what is reporteo
on this subject has no foundation. &
| Button says that the stag takes five or
six years to attain full growth ana
should live seven times this period that
| is, thirty-dVe or forty years.
Though precise observations are want
ing, we know that fishes, specially tie
| large species, live very long time. Ao-
cording to Bacon, cells reach sixty years.
| Carps have been known to live at least
100 years, and they then seemed TO
Button as lively and agile as ordinary
oarp Dolphins, surgeons and sharks
live more than century and attain
huge size. Pixies have been seen weigh
! Ing LOCO pounds, which indicates a very
long existence A pike caught at Kaisers
Lantern In 1897 was nineteen feet longand
weighed $50 pounds; it bore in it's gills
copper ring with an inscription stating
that it had been put in the pond of
Lantern by order of the Emperor Fred
erick II that is, 211 years before.
Whale fishers have exterminated the huge
whales of the polar seas; those that were
formerly met with were of prodigtous
dimensions. 1t is supposed, with some
| probability, that they live several GEN.
| turtles, and that they may even reach an
age of /, 900 years. The longevity of fish
| development, to their low temperature,
| and to their feeble vitality.
con the other hand, We meet another
class ct animals whose passions are lively
whose vitality is very active, and who
still live long time-we mean birds.
| But 1t IL not known with any degree of
pFeoision how long these live, except that
| their longevity is great. We see the same
| swallows returning to their accustomed
nest for a considerable number OF years.
An eagle died at Vienna at the age of
| 103 years. According to Button, the life
of the crow is 10S years, and no observa-
| tion authorizes us to attribute to it. with
Hesiod, 900 years. A paroquet brought
| to Florence In 1888 by the Princess
Proavere 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,
Willoughby, had certain proof that q
goose lived q century; and Button did
not hesitate to Conclude that the swans
! life is longer yet; some authors give it
two and even three centuries. MalleIton
possessed the skeleton of swan that had
lived S07 years. This is quite enough to
| prove that among the larger animals,
| and also especially among birds, the
duration of life, relatively to their bulk
/ and height, is very long; it is, on the
4 contrary, very abort with insects: many
of these live less than month, rarely
fe W years, while the life of the ephe-
nerds is but seven to twelve hours, and
in this brief space they accomplish the
principal functions that nature requires
of organized bodies; they are born, re-
prod uce and die"