THE BABY ELEPHANT.

On the 10th of this month an event occurred in Philadelphia that has aroused universal curiosity and interest. It was the birth of a baby elephant, which immediately became famous as being the first of his kind, so far as is known, ever born in captivity. All other elephants brought to this country for exhibition, or used in Eastern countries as beasts of burden, have been captured and tamed, and it has heretofore been regarded as an unquestioned fact that they would not breed in captivity.

The mother of the cunning little fellow who is attracting so much attention is a large black Asiatic elephant named Hebe, and belongs to the Great London Circus. She is acknowledged by all the other elephants of the circus as their queen, and they are all loyally devoted to her. She and six other large elephants have been spending the winter in a stable at the corner of Twenty-third Street and Ridge Avenue, Philadelphia. Here the elephants stand in a large room, each with their hind-legs chained to posts.

THE EXCITED ELEPHANTS.

Immediately upon the birth of the little elephant the others seemed to become crazy with joy. They had been very quiet, but they now set up the most tremendous bellowing and trumpeting imaginable. Some of them broke their chains, and danced about in the most grotesque manner, besides performing all the tricks they had been taught in the circus ring. The general excitement communicated itself to Hebe, and in a moment she became the most frantic of them all. Snapping the chains that bound her to the posts as though they were threads, and apparently becoming, for the first time, aware of the presence of her baby, she seized him with her trunk and threw him with great force, twenty yards or more, to the opposite side of the room. He fell close beside a large stove, around which was a railing of heavy timbers. Rushing after him, his crazy mother beat down this railing, threw over the stove, and in her madness would probably have killed her baby, had not her keeper, who had fled for his life upon the first outbreak, returned with help, and attracted her attention. With considerable difficulty she was secured and again chained to the posts, and the other animals were also quieted. During all the confusion the baby had stood motionless in the place to which his mother had flung him, and had regarded the whole scene with a look of wise solemnity such as only a baby can assume.

When quiet was restored, he became very frisky, and was willing to make friends with everybody. He ran about with his mouth wide open, and his little trunk pointing upward in the funniest way possible. He blundered about here and there, running against all sorts of things, and finally seemed overjoyed to be taken back to his mother, who has ever since shown the greatest fondness for him. He is thirty-five inches high, and weighs 214 pounds, so that he is about the size of a large Newfoundland dog. He is fed by means of a nursing-bottle made of a yard of rubber hose and a large funnel. One end of the hose is put in his mouth, and the other is attached to the funnel, into which the keepers pour warm milk until the baby shows that he has had enough by throwing down his end of the tube.