THE LENGTH OF ANIMAL LIFE AT THE ZOO 179 



which was brought to the menagerie in 1876. The 

 Zoo elephants, though of the larger size, are quite 

 young as elephant life goes not yet grown up, 

 though one stands 10 feet high at the shoulder. The 

 Indian elephant, which died in the spring of 1896, 

 was just twenty years old. Elephants in England 

 seldom live more than fifty years. In the Government 

 keddahs of India the average is eighty years, though 

 individuals have lived beyond a hundred. The eagle, 

 which, with the crow, shares the tradition of being the 

 longest lived of all birds, suffers like all the raptorial 

 birds from confinement. The oldest hawk in the Zoo 

 is a Brazilian Caracara, presented by Lord Lilford in 

 1876. To judge by the analogy of the known limit 

 of life in dogs, the foxes attain their full age at the 

 Zoo ; many of these live for ten, and some for 

 twelve years. Monkeys, in spite of all the disad- 

 vantages of climate, are kept far longer than is 

 generally supposed. The northern Chinese Tcheli 

 monkey, which has an outdoor cage, is eleven years 

 old ; and one Indian hill monkey which, oddly 

 enough, was subject to fits and required to be re- 

 vived with cold water like a human being in a faint, 

 lived to the age of eighteen. Such facts are interest- 

 ing as data, but the accumulation of instances in- 

 creases the difficulty of forming any clear view 

 as to the causes or conditions of animal longevity. 



