AGEING ELEPHANTS. CI 



eighteen ; and it is not in full vigour and strength till about thirty-five. 

 Female elephants usually give birth to their first calf at sixteen years of 

 age, sometimes at thirteen or fourteen, but are then palpably immature 

 themselves. I have heard of what appears to be a well-authenticated case 

 of a female elephant having two calves at a birth. Many wild female 

 elephants are accompanied by two, sometimes three, calves of different ages. 



Elephants breed about once in two and a half years. Two calves 

 are usually sucking at the same time; and I have even seen the eldest 

 of three, a young elephant five and a half feet high, and about five years 

 old, that had to stoop to reach its mother, suck occasionally. I need hardly 

 say that the young elephant sucks with its mouth, not its trunk. 



Calves usually stand exactly three feet high at the shoulder when born ; 

 the trunk is then only ten inches long, and possesses little flexibility. The 

 average weight of several calves I have weighed on the second day after 

 birth has been 200 lb. They live entirely upon milk till six months old, 

 when they eat a little tender grass ; their chief support, however, is still 

 milk for some months. 



The elephant very rarely breeds in confinement, but this is owing to 

 the segregation of the sexes, and also to the physical causes of insufficient 

 food or hard work. It would not answer from an economic point of view 

 to breed elephants in India, as, before they were of a useful age — fifteen 

 years — they would have cost more than would suffice to capture a number 

 of mature wild ones, ready for work. It is said that they are„ bred in a 

 semi-wild state, and with little expense, in parts of Burmah and Siam. 

 The females there are shackled and left at large in the forests during the 

 non-working months, where wild males have access to them. But in Burmah 

 fodder is plentiful, and the young stock cost nothing till taken up for sale. 



The female elephant evinces no peculiar attachment to her offspring. 

 The statement of Knox, quoted by Sir Emerson Tennent, that " the shees 

 are alike tender of any one's young ones as of their own" is incorrect. 

 Much exclusiveness is shown by elephants in the detailed arrangements 

 amongst themselves in a herd, and if the mothers and young ones be closely 

 watched, it will be seen that the latter are very rarely allowed familiarities 

 by other females, nor, indeed, do they seek them. I have seen many cases 

 in the kheddahs where young elephants, after losing their mothers by death 

 or other causes, have been refused assistance by the other females, and have 

 been buffeted about as outcasts. I have only known one instance of a very 

 gentle, motherly elephant in captivity allowing a motherless calf to suck 

 along with her own young one. 



Sir Emerson Tennent mentions the belief that if a wild female elephant 



