The copper country evening news. [volume] (Calumet, Mich.) 18??-1907, 1897-11-01
llf Egg BRIEF SPAN.
a tortoise In London Geological Gardens
the Oldest Thing Alive

the oidest Thing Alive.
The statement by southern Kansas
paper that negro resides in Bourbon
county who has attained tho age of 1877
years recalls n recent statement by the
London Spectator that the oldest living
creature I'm the world occupies a place i'm
the London Geological garden. 1t is a
giant tortoise weighing more than a ton
and has a record going back $50 years.
How much longer it has lived no one
knows Commenting on the long life
lived by this tortoise and by others, The
Spectator gives us the following interest
ing dissertation:
1.-The structure of the tortoises contrib
utes a large share to their pre-eminence i'm
length of life. Their bodies are spared the
whole of that exhausting process of coll
lapse and expansion which we call breath
ing. The cruel wear and tear of ills in
cessant motion, involving work of lungs,
muscles, ribs and air passages, unnoticcd
in health, but one of the most distressing
facts revealed by illness, does not fall on
the happy tortoise. His shell, backplate
and breastplate alike is as rigid as piece
of concrete; He sucks in air by making n
vacuum with his tongue and swallows it
like water, the reservoir instead of a stom-
ach being his capacious lungs In addi-
ton to this enormous saving of energy,
the tortoise enjoys two other structural
advantages. He has no teeth to decay,
break, get out of order and ultimately
starve him to death, like those of an old
horse or n broken toothed rabbit. Instead
he has sharp horny edges to his mouth,
which do not break or get out of order.
And, lastly, there is his impcnetrablc shell.
In reference to this, size is of a real advan-
tage, for, though the small tortoise NAV
live for centuries in bishops gardens they
have their enemies in the outer world.
Adjutant storks swallow them whole and
digest them, shell and all, and in Califor.
mia the golden eagle carries them up 20 q
| height and lets them fall on the rocks
| thereby smashing their shells, as the Sicil
| ian eagle was trying TO do when he drop
ped the tortoise on the skull of Eschylus
but when q tortoise grows to the weight OF
| 200 pounds there is no living creatur,
which could injure it in any way AS il
| can swim it cannot drown. Its limbs are
| so constructed rs to be little liable to frac
| ture, and its interior is SO arranged that i
can fast for long periods, and has an in
| ternal reservoir OF water, though it is nat
| urally rather thirsty animal. Charles
Darwin, when among the giant tortoises o
| the Galapagos islands, saw the newl'
| Matched young carried off by buZZards
| but the full grown animals seemed beyont
the chance of any danger. He surmiset
| that their deaths, when such took place
| where only due TO accidents, such as fall
ing over precipices, and the inhabitants o
| the islands corroborated this conclusion. y
While this description of the tortoise i
entertaining the chief interest will rever
back to the apparently well founded CLAIM
that $50 years is the age of the Oldest liy
ing thing on earth. What a brief span tn
Almighty has allotted to his creatures il
world that rolls on forever !-Kansa
City Journal.