LONGEVITY OF ANIMALS. 18l 



gorged with superfluity: and when the bodily 

 powers of rapacious creatures become impaired, 

 existence is difficult to support, and gradually 

 ceases ; but with herbivorous animals in the same 

 condition, supply is not equally precarious, or 

 wholly denied. Yet it is probable that few animals 

 in a perfectly wild state live to a natural extinction 

 of life. In a state of domestication, the small 

 number of carnivorous creatures about us are shel- 

 tered and fed with care, seldom are in want of 

 proper food, and at times are permitted to await a 

 gradual decay, continuing as long as nature per- 

 mits ; and by such attentions many have attained 

 to a great age ; but this is rather an artificial than 

 a natural existence. Our herbivorous animals, 

 being kept mostly for profit, are seldom allowed to 

 remain beyond approaching age; and when its 

 advances trench upon our emoluments by diminish- 

 ing the supply of utility, we remove them. The 

 uses of the horse, though time may reduce them, 

 are often protracted ; and our gratitude for past 

 services, or interest in what remains, prompts us to 

 support his life by prepared food of easy digestion, 

 or requiring little mastication, and he certainly by 

 such means attains to a longevity probably beyond 

 the contingencies of nature. I have still a favourite 

 pony for she has been a faithful and able per- 

 former of all the duties required of her in my 

 service for upwards of two-and- twenty years and, 



