it has steadily increased in actual weight. Many herring, eels, and other soft-bodied fishes pass through stages similar to those seen in the lady-fish. Another type of development is illustrated in the sword-fish. The young has a bony head, bristling with spines. As it grows older the spines disappear, the skin grows smoother, and, finally, the bones of the upper jaw grow together, forming a prolonged sword, the teeth are lost and the fins become greatly modified. Fig. 152 shows three of these stages of growth. The

FIG. 152. Three stages in the development of the sword-fish (Xiphias gladius). a, very young; b, older; c, adult.-Partly after LÜTKEN.

flounder or flat-fish (Fig. 152) when full grown lies flat on one side when swimming or when resting in the sand on the bottom of the sea. The eyes are both on the upper side of the body, and the lower side is blind and colorless. When the flounder is hatched it is a transparent fish, broad and flat, swimming vertically in the water, with an eye on each side. As its development (Fig. 153) goes on it rests itself obliquely on the bottom, the eye of the lower side turns upward, and as growth proceeds it passes gradually

around the forehead, its socket moving with it, until both eyes and sockets are transferred by twisting of the skull to

the upper side. In some related forms or soles the small eye passes through the head and not around it, appearing finally in the same socket with the other eye.

Thus in almost all the great groups of animals we find certain kinds which show metamorphosis in their postembryonic development. But metamorphosis is simply development; its striking and extraordinary features are usually due to the fact that the orderly, gradual course of the development is revealed to us only occasionally, with the result of giving the impression that the development is proceeding by leaps and bounds from one strange stage to

FIG. 154.-Development of a flounder (after EMERY). The eyes in the young flounder are arranged normally, one on each side of head.

another. If metamorphosis is carefully studied it loses its aspect of marvel, although never its great interest.

244. Duration of life.-After an animal has completed its development it has but one thing to do to complete its life cycle, and that is the production of offspring. When it has laid eggs or given birth to young, it has insured the beginning of a new life cycle. Does it now die? Is the business of its life accomplished? There are many animals which die immediately or very soon after laying eggs. The May-flies-ephemeral insects which issue as winged adults from ponds or lakes in which

are

they have spent from one to three years as aquatic crawling or swimming larvæ, flutter about for an evening, mate, drop their packets of fertilized eggs into the water, and die before the sunrise extreme examples of the numerous kinds of animals whose adult life lasts only long enough for mating and egglaying. But elephants live for two hundred years. Whales probably live longer. A horse lives about thirty years, and so may a cat or toad. anemone, which was kept in an aquarium, lived sixty-six years. Cray-fishes may live twenty years. A queen bee was kept in captivity for fifteen years. Most birds have long lives-the small song birds from eight to eighteen years, and the great eagles and vultures up to a hundred years or more. On the other hand, among all the thousands of species of insects, the individuals of very few indeed live more than a year; the adult life of most insects being but a few days or weeks, or at best months. Even among the higher animals, some are very short-lived. In Japan is a small fish (Solaux) which probably lives

A sea

FIG. 155.-Metamorphosis of a barnacle (Lepas). a, larva; b, adult.

but a year, ascending the rivers in numbers when young in the spring, the whole mass of individuals dying in the fall after spawning.

Naturalists have sought to discover the reason for these extraordinary differences in the duration of life of different animals, and while it can not be said that the reason or reasons are wholly known, yet the probability is strong that the duration of life is closely connected with, or dependent upon, the conditions attending the production of offspring. It is not sufficient, as we have learned from our study of the multiplication of animals (Chapter VI), that an adult animal shall produce simply a single new individual of its kind, or even only a few. It must produce many, or if it produces comparatively few it must devote great care to the rearing of these few, if the perpetuation of the species is to be insured. Now, almost all long-lived animals are species which produce but few offspring at a time, and reproduce only at long intervals, while most short-lived animals produce a great many eggs, and these all at one time.. Birds are long-lived animals; as we know, most of them lay eggs but once a year, and lay only a few eggs each time. Many of the sea birds which swarm in countless numbers on the rocky ocean islets and great sea cliffs lay only a single egg once each year. And these birds, the guillemots and murres and auks, are especially long-lived. Insects, on the contrary, usually produce many eggs, and all of them in a short time. The May-fly, with its one evening's lifetime, lets fall from its body two packets of eggs and then dies. Thus the shortening of the period of reproduction with the production of a great many offspring seem to be always associated with a short adult lifetime; while a long period of reproduction with the production of few offspring at a time and care of the offspring are associated with a long adult lifetime.

There seems also to be some relation between the size of animals and the length of life. As a general rule,

to

large animals are long-lived and small animals have short lives.

245. The number of young. There is great variation in the number of young produced by different species of animals. Among the animals we know familiarly, as the mammals, which give birth to young alive, and the birds, which lay eggs, it is the general rule that but few young are produced at a time, and the young are born or eggs are laid only once or perhaps a few times in a year. The robin lays five or six eggs once or twice a year; a cow may produce a calf each year. Rabbits and pigeons are more prolific, each having several broods a year. But when we observe the multiplication of some of the animals whose habits are not so familiar to us, we find that the production of so few young is the exceptional and not the usual habit. A lobster lays ten thousand eggs at a time; a queen bee lays about five million eggs in her life of four or five years. female white ant, which after it is full grown does nothing but lie in a cell and lay eggs, produces eighty thousand eggs a day steadily for several months. A large codfish was found on dissection to contain about eight million eggs.

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If we search for some reason for this great difference in fertility among different animals, we may find a promising clew by attending to the duration of life of animals, and to the amount of care for the young exercised by the parents. We find it to be the general rule that animals which live many years, and which take care of their young, produce but few young; while animals which live but a short time, and which do not care for their young, are very prolific. The codfish produces its millions of eggs; thousands are eaten by sculpins and other predatory fishes before they are hatched, and other thousands of the defenseless young fish are eaten long before attaining maturity. Of the great number produced by the parent, a few only reach maturity and produce new young. But the eggs of the