FUNCTIONAL VARIATION 89 



that go far toward constituting the essential distinction between 

 annuals and biennials in temperate regions. . . 



And so it is that the value of an animal or a plant depends 

 not only upon what it can do but also upon its powers to endure 

 sustained exertion ; and this is indirectly dependent upon the 

 vital functions, which are therefore of prime consequence to the 

 farmer. The horse that died in a Michigan coal mine at fifty- 

 four years of age after having worn out more than five genera- 

 tions of harness mates ; Old Granny, the Galloway cow that 

 died at nearly thirty -six years of age, having raised no fewer 

 than twenty-five calves ; men who live to be a hundred or 

 thereabouts, these are examples not of individuals that have 

 been shielded from hardships, but rather of those splendid 

 pieces of animal machinery whose every part easily performs its 

 proper function to any limit laid upon it by the exigencies of 

 life. 1 That these functional differences exist and that they are 

 in a measure hereditary are facts that challenge the most careful 

 attention of the thoughtful breeder. 



1 Benjamin Franklin Harris died of pneumonia in Champaign, Illinois, May 7, 

 1905, at the age of ninety-three years, four months, twenty-two days. He was 

 personally known to the writer as remarkable not so much for his advanced age 

 as for the fact that he was in full possession of all his powers, and actively 

 engaged in business until within a w r eek of his death. He organized the First 

 National Bank, which at his death was operated by three generations of the 

 Harris family ; but he was president to the last in fact as well as in name, and 

 the management deferred to his judgment even in matters of detail. 



He was the owner and operator of over five hundred acres of prairie land, and 

 was one of the earliest and largest cattle men in the Middle West. He was a 

 noted feeder before a market w r as established in Chicago, and was both a buyer 

 and a seller on that market every year of his life afterward. He was always a 

 believer in heavy cattle, and he finished and sold the one hundred heaviest cattle 

 ever marketed in this country and, so far as is known, in the world, an achieve- 

 ment of which he was always especially proud. 



This instance of longevity is given not as an extreme in respect to years but 

 in respect to retention for so long a time of all the powers of body and mind. 

 Mr. Harris never had a second childhood, and was a good example of what 

 a splendid machine is the human organism, which ordinarily breaks at the 

 weakest point but does not wear out. How full of weak points animal organ- 

 isms really are and how weak these points must be are considerations forced upon 

 the mind by the fact that Mr. Harris' span of life was more than three times that 

 of the average man. These three instances of extreme longevity in animals and 

 man, showing what is possible in animal life, afford to the breeder ample food for 

 reflection. 



