The larger the mature size of a mammal, the longer tends to be the time it takes to mature. In an attempt to quantify this relationship, Brody's (1945) studies on post-natal growth and Weinbach's (1941) study on pre-natal growth are re-examined. Both these authors described growth by attributing to each species a live-weight scaling parameter, an age scaling parameter, and a parameter for age origin. By examining the interrelations of these six pre- and post-natal growth parameters, a general empirical relationship between mature weight and time taken to mature is obtained. The time a species takes to reach any particular degree of maturity, that is any fraction of its mature weight, tends to be directly proportional to its mature weight raised to the 0·27th power. This result is in general agreement with previous theoretical work and with results on the time required to reach adult weight.

The simplest way to make use of this general relation is considered. When age measured from an origin at or near conception is divided by the 0·27th power of mature weight, then on this modified scale, the age at which a species reaches a given degree of maturity has an expectation independent of mature weight. This age scale has been called metabolic age, since it amalgamates the properties of Brody's physiological age and Kleiber's metabolic turnover time. The most useful working form, however, is the logarithm of metabolic age which is approximately normally distributed with constant variance at all degrees of maturity. Equations are derived giving the expected metabolic age of a species at any degree of maturity in the range covered by Brody's and Weinbach's growth curves. Metabolic age thus appears to furnish a one-parameter representation of comparative mammalian growth.