594 THE MOUNTAIN. 



epiphyses, the animal grows ; when once the bones and their 

 epiphyses are united, the animal grows no more. This union 

 in man is effected at 20 years ; in the camel at 8 ; horse 5 ; 

 ox4; lion 4; dog 2 ; cat 18 months; rabbit 12 months; 

 guinea-pig 7, etc. Now man lives from 90 to 100 years ; 

 the camel 40 ; horse 25 ;* ox 15 to 20 ; lion 20 ; dog 10 to 

 12 ; cat 9 to 10 ; rabbit 8 ; guinea-pig 6 to 7, ete. etc. The 

 relation pointed out by Buffon is very near the truth. He 

 says that every animal lives nearly six or seven times as 

 long as the term of its growth. The true relation is five, 

 or very nearly. Man being twenty years growing, lives five 

 times twenty, that is to say, one hundred years ; the camel 

 being eight, lives forty, etc. We have, then, finally, a pre- 

 cise characteristic which gives accurately the duration of 

 growth; the duration of growth gives us the duration of 

 life. All the phenomena of life are united by the following 

 chain of relations : the duration of life is given by the dura- 

 tion of growth ; the duration of growth is given by the 

 duration of gestation ; the duration of gestation, by the 

 height, etc. etc. The larger the animal the longer is the 

 time of gestation. The gestation of the rabbit is thirty 

 days ; that of man is nine months ; that of the elephant is 

 nearly two years." 



Such being the finally-arranged scientific biological results 

 of ages of observation, why this great scarcity of patriarchs 

 of even a century, and extreme rarity of octogenarians, 

 while the regular, never-failing harvest of threescore and ten 

 arrives, and Death and his dart appear so often before half 

 a score, and such multitudes never see onescore and five ? 

 How does it come that nearly everybody (two-fifths !) 

 dies before five years of age ; very many before they are 

 born, (for the percentage of still-births, see tables,) and 

 multitudes in their youth, while not one in a thousand lives 

 to be one hundred years old, as originally arranged by the 

 structure of his bones in an ordinary physiological minimum, 



* As an example of "extraordinary" life in animals, the horse has 

 attained to fifty years. See FLOURENS. 



