Many elephants have become famous in ancient and modern times,—some by their deeds in war (for their courage and daring), others for their domestic virtues and intelligence. But Jumbo, whose fame extended to all civilized nations, was noted for his great size, and for the hue and cry raised over his departure from their country by the English people; and it is safe to say that no animal ever rose to quite such a lofty pinnacle of popularity. Probably not a boy or girl who visited the huge animal when alive, but ever after took an interest in his career, and sincerely regretted his untimely end. Jumbo was a prince among elephants, a magnificent example of the possibilities of animal life, and a type of a race that is slowly but surely passing away. Jumbo’s early infancy was undoubtedly spent in the wilds of Central Africa. In 1861, when he was about four feet high, an elephantine toddler, Sir Samuel Baker saw him in the possession of some Hamran Arabs, who were taking him down the Settite River for delivery to a collector named Johann Schmidt. The latter sold him to the Jardin des Plantes; and Mr. W. B. Tegetmier says, “I saw him the day after his arrival in the Gardens, and went into his den with Mr. Bartlett. He was then about four feet high; and the keeper, holding a long-handled broom in the usual manner, was scrubbing his back, which was far below him.” This was in 1865: so that when he died, Jumbo was presumably about twenty-six years old, hardly in his prime; and I learn from Professor Ward, who mounted the skeleton, that he had not ceased growing. From 1865 to 1882 Jumbo lived in the Gardens of the London Zoölogical Society, pampered, fed, and petted by old and young; daily being marched upon the green with a load of children upon his back; and though, as Sir Samuel Baker says, he was not designed by nature as a perambulator, still the great animal was eminently successful as one. [Illustration: PLATE VI. THE DINOTHERIUM. (_An extinct Elephant-like Creature._) _Page 62._]