Note 3 — Chapter XII · TAMING AND TRAINING ELEPHANTS—CAPTURE AND TREATMENT—ELEPHANTS AS LABORERS AND AS CIRCUS PERFORMERS.

Most readers are familiar with the term “rogue” as applied to elephants, but probably some are not aware of its exact meaning. A herd of elephants is a family, and not a group collected by accident or attachment. The usual number of individuals in a herd is from ten to twenty, though the latter number is sometimes exceeded. In their visits to water-courses and migrations, alliances are formed between members of different herds, thus introducing new blood into the family. If an individual becomes separated from his herd, however, he is not permitted to introduce himself into another. He may browse in their vicinity, or resort to the same stream to bathe or drink, but farther than this no acquaintance is allowed. An elephant who has lost his herd, and is by this habit of exclusiveness made an outcast, is a “rogue,” and this ban under which he suffers tends to excite that moroseness and savageness for which rogues are noted. Another conjecture is, that as rogues are almost always males, the death or capture of particular females has led them to leave their herds to seek new alliances. A tame elephant escaping from captivity, unable to find his former companions, becomes of necessity a rogue.