Democratic Sentinel, Volume 14, Number 14, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 25 April 1890 — SIZE AND LONGEVITY. [ARTICLE]

SIZE AND LONGEVITY.

Ko Find Relation Between Them, Tboafh Lars# Organizations lire Longest. Although there is some relation between size and longevity, the duration of the period of growth and length of life being, speaking generally, longest In the largest animals, there is no Axed relation between the two. The largest organizations live the some trees reaching the age of 6,000 pears, and some animals, as whales, several centuries. And, after maturity is reached, larger animals require longer time than smaller animals to secure the preservation of the species. The explanation of this, as pointed »ut by both Leuckhart and Herbert Spencer, is that “the absorbing surface of an animal only increases as the square of its length, while its size insreases as the cube; and it therefore follows that the longer an animal beDomes the greater will be the difficulty experienced in assimilating any nourishment over and above that which it requires for its own needs, and, therefore. the more slowly will it reproduce Itself.” We, however, find corresponding duration of life among animals of every different size. For instance, the toad and the cat live as long as the horse, the crayfish as long as the pig, and the pike and carp as lonv as the elephant In an Interesting appendix, from which these and the following facts are quoted, Dr. Weissman cites the case of a sea anemone which lived not less than sixty-six years. It was placed by Sir John Dalzell in a small glass jar in the Edinburgh botanical gardens in 1828, being then, as companions with other individuals reared from the egg period, fully seven years old. It died a natural death in 1887.