JUNGLE VETERANS.

Auckland Star, Volume LIX, Issue 71, 24 March 1928, Page 10 (Supplement)

JUNGLE VETERANS.

WHICH ANIMALS LIVE LONGEST! It was announced recently that a pony had lived to the amazing age of fiftythree years. But horaes are naturally much longer lived than is generally supposed, for as a rule a horse's legs go from unnatural work on hard roads and it is destroyed long before it has reached its natural span of life. The longest lived of British mammals is probably the red deer. Forty, fifty, even sixty years is given as the ago of this animal. The famous white hind of Loch Treig is raaid to have lived one hundred and ten years. . Elephants usually live to eighty, and there are many instances of elephants over a hundred years old. But size has not much to do with age, for lions and tigers are not long lived, and even the great grizzly bear, which often weighs 12001b, has a life span of only thirty years. The buffalo is old at twenty. Birds live longer than beasts. The parrot holds the record in this respect. There is a parrot in London which is definitely known to be at least one hundred and twenty years old. All day it talks, swings on a rope, and plays with a ball. This bird was originally the tribal mascot of the Rajah of Satara, and was captured from him in 1801. Ravens and eagles are supposed to live a very long time, but we have no exact figures. Of geese, however, we have an instance of one sixty years old that was still strong and healthy. The tortoise is the longest lived of land animals. One of the giant Galapagos Island tortoises which died in the Zoo in 1908 was believed to be three hundred and fifty years old.

Agar-agar is the name of a gelatinous substance obtained from Ceylon moss and similar seaweeds. The name is of Malay origin. Agar-agar is used in soups and jellied, and in the artificial cultivation of bacteria. It is also used in the Orient as a glue and to render silk and paper transparent. t