Animal Longevity It is a nice question whether animals live
longer in the wild or in captivity ; but so many meet violent death that the captive animal certainly excels on the average and probably also in the individual. Some actual figures of captive birds have been published in the November number of the always excellent magazine of the Country Gentlemen's Association, and one fact emerges, though the inference is not directly drawn. The bigger the bird the longer the life. The peacock and the goose are long-lived, the hen is short-lived—say 16 years at the most—and the tit very short-lived. Exceptions doubtless are numerous—the parrot reaches a portentous age and the raven probably excels the heron—but no very small bird lives long. My own experience of caged birds is very small indeed, but in regard to one species it corroborates one of the examples quoted by " J. D. U. W." The lark seems to be longer lived than most small birds. I have known of a 17-year- old lark, though not of such a veteran as the record given by this expert.
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