I04 NATURAL HISTORY ESSAYS 



their quaint drawings, perhaps the most remark- 

 able of these sketches being that which represents 

 the animal as semi-domesticated and carrying a 

 load on its back. Whether the tTrTrapgtoi/ of Aristotle 

 is identical with Giraffa came loparda lis is doubtful : 

 but the Greek writer Agatharchides (b.c. 130) has 

 certainly left a recognisable description of the 

 animal, and both yElian and Strabo mention the 

 giraffe. We have already noticed Pliny's descrip- 

 tion of the first living example ever brought to 

 Europe, obtained from Alexandria by Julius Csesar, 

 who exhibited it at Rome : subsequent efforts to 

 capture the camelopard were very successful, and 

 it is recorded that Gordian III. had ten alive at 

 once, a record which has never been approached 

 by any modern Zoo.^ Other emperors, as Corn- 

 modus and Aurelian, also exhibited this animal : 

 but after the fall of the Roman Empire the northern 

 giraffe remained long unknown in Europe, and 

 people began to believe that so extraordinary an 

 animal was only a mythical creature like the griffon 

 and the wyvern, the phoenix of Egypt and the 

 roc of Madagascar. 



(b) Mediceval period. During the middle ages 

 a few giraffes were sent across the Mediterranean : 

 Frederick II. of Sicily (i 198-1227) had living 

 specimens in his menagerie : and at the end of 



1 I understand, however, that Carl Hagenbeck, the well-known 

 wild beast merchant, had as many as thirty-five giraftes for sale 

 during the summer of 1876 — probably not all at the same time. 



