Page:Jungle Joe, pride of the circus; the story of a trick elephant (IA junglejoeprideof00hawk).pdf/26

 female elephant the mother of from fifteen to twenty elephants.

The elephant does not gain his full size and weight until he is about twenty-five. When he is born, he is three feet high and weighs two hundred pounds. After that he grows an inch a month until he is five years old. Then the growth is slower.

The strangest of all the elephant's peculiar organs is his trunk, which one scientist says contains forty thousand muscles. Certain it is that he can use it in many ways. It is so powerful that he can lift hundreds of pounds of weight with it, and so delicate that he can pick up a pin from the floor. It is by means of the trunk that the elephant drinks. He can also suck in much more water than he wants for his immediate use and store it up in his water-stomach, which in a full