Strange stories of the animal world : A book of curious contributions to natural history / by John Timbs.
- John Timbs
- Date:
- 1866
Licence: Public Domain Mark
Credit: Strange stories of the animal world : A book of curious contributions to natural history / by John Timbs. Source: Wellcome Collection.
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![day, wliicli once roamed over all tlie woodland districts of Central Europe, and wliicli, in our own island, was contem- porary with tlie extinct races of mastodon, elephant, and rhinoceros. The Aurochs exists only in one locality, in the forest of Ilialavieja, in Lithuania, where it is carefully pro- tected by the Eussian government from extirpation. As a royal hunting-ground it has been preserved in the primitive state of an American forest, inhabited by bears, wild boars, wolves, foxes, lynxes, elks, and roebucks, together with the aurochs. A. young male and female Aurochs, captured in 18T6, were presented to the Zoological Society, by blicholas. Emperor of Eussia, avIio likewise presented a pair of stuffed specimens to the British Museum. Of the ages of animals in coiifinement, ]\Ir. Edward Cross, jiroprietor of the INfenagerie at Exeter Change, and subse- (piently at the King’s jMews, and the Surrey Zoological Gardens, Walworth, gave the writer the following as the result of forty-eight years’ experience in keeping animals, lions. Tigers, Leopards, Jaguars, and Hyenas, upon an aver- age, live twenty-five years \ the smaller cats, as the Tiger-cat, I.ynx, Ocelot, Margay, and Serval, sixteen to eighteen years; jMonkeys and Baboons, sixteen to eighteen years; the Coati- mondi, Eacoon, Beaver, and Civet-cat, twelve to fourteen years; the Antelope, sixteen to eighteen years. The little that is recorded of the longevity of Cetacea favours the supj)osition of their being long-lived. The age of the M hale is known by the size and number of laminae of whale- bone, which increase yearly, and if observation can be relied upon, would sometimes indicate an age of three or four hundred years for these animals. J he Eonpial, of this family, about 100 feet in length, is](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b28127420_0059.jp2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
