98 
many leagues of the Atlantic, between 18 and 30 
degrees of north latitude, (see Walsh’s Notices of 
Brazil,) and the conferva vagabunda floating loosely 
from shore to shore over many of our English lakes. 
Growth. 
The elephant is said to attain to its full growth 
and maturity in eighteen or twenty years; the horse 
and ass in five; the mouse and rabbit in five or six 
weeks. The duration of life is nearly proportionate. 
A mouse and a rabbit are aged in three and six 
years: horses and asses live to thirty, and even to 
forty years. A lion, which is full grown in five or 
six years, attained to the age of seventy in the 
Tower menagerie. The elephant reaches 100 or 
200 years. The whale suckles its cubs for a whole 
year. They are probably long lived: but in our 
eagerness for oil we have no leisure for experiments 
or physical inquiry. 
Eagles, ravens, and swans, parrots and pelicans, 
are said to live to above 100 years. They do not 
reach their full growth in less than a year, and vary 
in their plumage so as to indicate incomplete matur- 
ity for two or three years. Gallinaceous birds, which 
run as soon as hatched, are mature in a year; and 
float widely over the waters, heaven-directed to their destined ob- 
jects. Many fruits of America and the West Indies are carried by 
tides and by the gulf-stream to the shores of Europe; as the ca- 
shew-nut and the cocoa-nut: the latter, thus carried from shore 
to shore, is the first species which takes root on the newly-formed 
islands of coral, not unfrequent between the tropics. 
