48 Professor E. May Lankester [Feb. 



WEEKLY EVENING MEETING, 



Friday, February 7, 1902. 



The Right Hon. Sir James Stirling, M.A. LL.D. F.E.S., 

 Vice-President, in the Chair. 



Professor E. Ray Lankester, M.A. LL.D. F.R.S., Director of the 

 Natural History Department of the British Museum. 



The New Mammal from Central Africa, and Us Relation to other 

 Giraffe-like Animals. 



Professor Ray Lankester began by pointing out how frequently 

 the observation Ex Africa semper aliquid novi had been exemplified 

 during the last fifty or sixty years in regard to discoveries in geo- 

 graphy and natural history. He went on to tell how Sir Harry 

 Johnston had fallen in with a party of the dwarfs that inhabit the 

 Semliki forest, who were being taken to be shown at the Paris 

 Exhibition by a German speculator, and, thinking that a visit to 

 Paris would not be specially good for them, had conducted them 

 back to their own district. Travelling with them, he took the 

 opportunity of asking them about the animals of the forest, in 

 particular inquiring about an animal which had been heard of by 

 Sir H. M. Stanley. In this way he was informed about the Okapi, 

 and obtained from the dwarfs some pieces of its skin, which on 

 being sent home to England were not unnaturally supposed to be 

 of a zebra, probably a new species. Later, Mr. Eriksson, the officer 

 in charge ot one of the posts of the Congo Independent State, sent 

 him a skin and two skulls of the Okapi. These he despatched to 

 England, at the same time identifying the animal as related to the 

 giraffe. 



Professor Lankester then showed pictures and photographs of 

 the animal as reconstructed at the Natural History Museum from 

 this skin and one of the skulls, pointing out the peculiarities of 

 its markings, the arrangement of the stripes on its legs, the 

 absence of secondary hoofs and of horns on its head, etc. The 

 skull was very remarkable for the development of the hinder part, 

 and for a swelling over and a little behind the eye, which suggested 

 that there the horn would grow if there was one. This, however, 

 was not the place where the horns occurred in the giraffe, as was 

 seen by a comparison of their skulls with that of the Okapi. The 

 teeth of the larger Okapi skull in the Museum were in the same 



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