Middlebury register. (Middlebury, Vt.) 1886-1937, 1896-10-09
DURATION OF LIFE IN ANIMALS.

DURATION OF LIFE IN ANIMALS.
Man lives to all ages, but in the ami
NAL kingdom, on the contrary, the dura-
ton of life is almost exactly equal for
all individuals of the same species. says
an exchange. 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. thirty to forty Ga lion in the Lon
don Geological gardens reached the age
of seventy years) the camel, forty.
The length OF life of the elephant is ur-
certain, but according to Aristotle, Buff
fOn and Cuvier, it lives two centuries;
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 it the name of Ajax; then, having
attached an inscription to it, he set it at
/ liberty. The animal was found $50
years later. The ancients attribute to
the stag a fabulous length of life, but
Aristotle observes that what is reported
on this subject has no good foundation.
Button says that the stag takes five or
six years to attain full growth and
should live seven times this period-that
Is, thirty-tye or forty years. Though
precise observations are wanting we
know that fishes, especially the large
species, live a very long time. Accord
! ing to Bacon cells reach sixty years.
Carps have been known to live at least
$50 years. and then they seemed to Buff
fon as lively and agile as ordinary carp.
DOlphins, surgeons and sharks live
m )re than a century and attain huge
size. Pixies have been seen weighing
| 100 pounds, which indicates a very long
existence. a pike caught at kaisers
| Lantern in 1897 was nineteen feet long
and weighed $50 pounds; it bore in its
gills a copper ring with an inscription
stating that it had been put in the pond
of Lantern by order of the Emperor
/ Frederick lI-that is, 2Gl years before.
Whale fishers have eXterminated the
huge whales of the polar seas; those
that were formerly met with were of
rrOdigious dimensions. 1t Is supposed,
with some probability, that they live
several centuries and that they may
even reach an age of 1000 years. The
longevity 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 live
ly, where 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 longevity is great. We see
the same swallows returning to their ac-
customed nests for considerable num-
Der of years. An eagle died at Vienna
at the age of lob years. According to
Button the life of the crow is los and no
observation authorizes us to attribute to
it, with IIesiod, 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
old and lived nearly 100 more. a natur-
ahst. whose testimony cannot be doubted,
Willoughby. had certain proof that a
goose lived century and Button did
not hesitate to conclude that the swans
life is longer yet; some authors gave it
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 among birds the dura-
ton of life, relatively to their bulk and
height, is very long; 1t is, on the con-
trary, very short with insects many OF
these live less than a month, rarely "A
few for years, while the life of the
ephemerids is but seven to twelve hours,
and in this brief space they accomplish
the principal functions that nature re-
quires of organized bodies; they are
born, reproduce and die.
Many political speakers, clergymen,
singers and others who use the voice