394 MAMMALIA OF INDIA. 
Until I read the above I, from my limited experience, had come to 
‘the conclusion that elephant mothers are very fussy and jealous of other 
females. (See Appendix C, p. 527.) 
I have only once seen an elephant born in captivity, and that was in 
1859, when I was in charge of the Sasseram Levy on the Grand Trunk 
‘road. Not far from the lines of my men was an elephant camp; they 
were mostly Burmese animals, and many of them died; but one little 
fellow made his appearance one fine morning, and was an object of 
‘great interest to us all. On one occasion, some years after, I went out 
after a tiger on a female elephant which had a very young calf. I 
repented it after a while, for 1 lost my tiger and my temper, and very 
nearly my life. Those who have read ‘Seonee,’ may remember the 
‘ludicrous scene in which I made the doctor figure as the hero. An 
‘elephant is full grown at twenty-five, though not in his prime till some 
years after. Forty years is what mahouts, I think, consider age, but 
the best elephants live up to one hundred years or even more.* 
A propos of my remarks, in the introductory portion of this paper on 
Proboscidea, regarding the probable gradual extinction of the African 
‘elephant, the following reassuring paragraphs from the lecture I have 
so extensively quoted will prove interesting and satisfactory. Mr. 
Sanderson has previously alluded to the common belief, strengthened by 
actual facts in Ceylon, that the elephant was gradually being extermi- 
nated in India; but this is not the case, especially since the laws for 
‘their protection have come into force: ‘The elephant-catching re- 
cords of the past fifty years attest the fact that there is no diminution in 
the numbers now obtainable in Bengal, whilst in Southern India ele- 
phants have become so numerous of late years that they are annually 
-appearing where they had never been heard of before.” 
He then instances the Billigarungun hills, an isolated range of three 
hundred square miles on the borders of Mysore, where wild elephants 
first made their appearance about eighty years ago, the country having 
‘relapsed from cultivation into a wilderness owing to the decimation of 
the inhabitants by three successive visitations of small-pox. He adds: 
“<The strict preservation of wild elephants seems only advantageous or 
desirable in conjunction with corresponding measures for keeping their 
numbers within bounds by capture. It is to be presumed that ele- 
phants are preserved with a view to their utilisation. With its jungles 
‘filled with elephants, the anomalous state of things by which Govern- 
ment, when obliged to go into the market, finds them barely procurable, 
and then only at prices double those of twenty, and quadruple those of 
forty years ago, will I trust be considered worthy of inquiry. Whilst it 
is necessary to maintain stringent restrictions on the wasteful and cruel 
Mative modes of hunting, it “will I believe be found advantageous to 
* See note in Appendix C on this subject. 
