Page:Jungle Joe, pride of the circus; the story of a trick elephant (IA junglejoeprideof00hawk).pdf/25

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into battle with his master. But, except in India, the art of capturing and training elephants seems to have been lost from about the time of the Christian Era till within the last century, when the elephant again became subservient to man.

The fact that the elephant once lived much farther north accounts in part for the theory that he was formerly covered with hair, but his living in the tropics has caused him to discard it as unnecessary.

This is probably why a baby elephant is born covered with a fine woolly hair, which he sheds when he is a few months old, and it never returns.

The female elephant gives birth to a baby elephant every three years after she is fifteen years old. This occurs until she is seventy-five, when she ceases to bear young. This would make the average