RANDOM READINGS.

Waipa Post, Volume VII, Issue 334, 28 July 1914, Page 7

RANDOM READINGS.

BREAKFAST FOR TWENTY.

There is in one of the New York museums a specimen of the largest bird’s egg in the world, that of the extinct aepyornis, of Madagascar. "Witli the shell one-eighth of an inch thick 'and twenty-six inches in circumference, it has a capacity of two gallons. The largest egg of the present age is that of the ostrich, which equals thirty-six hens’ eggs.

ANIMALS’ AGES.

Undoubtedly the longest-lived animal on earth is the whale, its span of ,■ existence being estimated by Cuvier --at one thousand years. The next largest animal, the elephant, will, under favorable conditions, live four hundred years.

When Alexander the Great conquered Porus, King of India, he took a great elephant that had fought gallantly for ‘the defeated king, named him Ajax, dedicated him to the sun,. and placed upoh him a netal band with the inscription, “Alexander, the son of Jupiter, dedicated Ajax to the sun.” The elephant was found alive three hundred and fifty years later.

The average age of cats is fifteen rears; of squirrels, seven or eight years; of rabbits, seven; a bear rarely exceeds twenty years; a wolf, twenty; a fox, fourteen to sixteen. Lions are comparatively long-lived, instances having been recorded where they reached the age of seventy years.

Pigs have been known to live to the age of twenty years, and horses to sixty, but the average age of the horse is twenty-five to thirty. Camels sometimes live to the age of a hundred, and stags are very long-lived, one having been taken by Charles VI. in the Forest of Senlis which bore about its neck a collar on which was engraved “Caesar hoo mihi donavit.”

’ Whether or not this stag had actually lived since the days of one of the Caesars it is impossible to say, but the evidence seems good.

Eagles occasionally, and ravens frequently reach the age of a hundred years, and swans have been known to live three hundred years. A tortoise has been known to live one hundred and seveil* years.