THE INDIAN ELEPHANT. 223 



which lived. Sanderson mentions the birth of eight calves (be- 

 tween September and November) in a herd of fifty-five elephants 

 he captured in Mysore. Even in the United States, under the most 

 imfavorable circumstances for elephants, two have been bom very 

 recently in a menagerie, and are still ahve. 



The period of gestation in the elephant is about twenty-two 

 months. The foetus at twelve months is almost jet black, the 

 teeth are destitute of the cementing crusta j^cifosa, and therefore 

 the enamelled plates, called laminae in the mature molar, are entirely 

 separate from each other, lying one upon the other in the cavity of 

 the jaw. At birth, the baby elephant is from thirty to thirty-six 

 inches high and weighs from one hundred and forty-five to two 

 hundred pounds. All those I have seen, both wild and in captivity, 

 have been of a dark brown color, several shades darker than adult 

 animals, and were usually quite hairy, especially upon the back and 

 head. 



The female elephant reaches the age of puberty at fifteen years, 

 but continues to grow for several years after. An elephant may be 

 said to attain its fuU growth between the ages of eighteen and 

 twenty-four years in captivity, and between twenty-four and thirty 

 in a wild state. Although there is no possible way of verifying the 

 accuracy of this statement so far as the wild elephants are con- 

 cerned, it certainly stands to reason that those in captivity, by rea- 

 son of overwork, underfeeding, exposure to the heat of the sun, and 

 irregularities in their treatment, will stop growing much earlier 

 than the wild animals. It is well known that captive elephants stop 

 growing between the ages first mentioned above, and more than 

 this, that elephants reared in captivity seldom reach the extreme 

 limit of size, which is found only in animals captured after their 

 full growth has been attained. It may therefore be made as a gen- 

 eral statement, that the elephant acquires his perfection of form, 

 size, and general physique at about the same age as does a weU- 

 developed white man of the temperate zone. 



At sixty years of age the elephant is considered to be in the 

 prime of life. According to Sanderson, experienced natives believe 

 that elephants generaUy live to about eighty years of age, and but 

 rarely attain an age of one hundred and twenty years ; his own 

 opinion, however, is, that under favorable circumstances the ani- 

 mal attains an age of one hundred and fifty years. 



As is the case with nearly all large animals, the height of the 

 Indian elephant is usually recorded in exceptional figures, which. 



