THE NORTHERN GH^AFFE lOj 



Owing to the closure of the Soudan by the 

 Mahdists, and the unsettled political conditions 

 arisino- therefrom, the death of the last of the 

 old stock caused a long- hiatus (1892- 1902) to 

 intervene before the northern o-iraffe was ag"ain 

 exhibited in the London Zoo. A pair of young 

 animals presented by Col. Mahon, and obtained 

 singularly enough from the same province — 

 Kordofan — as the giraffes of 1836, arrived in 

 London in the summer of 1902 and are still (1904) 

 flourishing in the Regent's Park menagerie. 



The northern giraffe has frequently been ex- 

 hibited in the various zooloo;ical oardens of the 

 Continent : a fine pair of adult animals were living 

 at Berlin in 1899, and the Jardin d'Acclimation at 

 Paris long possessed a herd of Abyssinian giraffes 

 which bred repeatedly in the garden, the last 

 survivor — an old bull— dying in June, 1902. The 

 Antwerp series included eight Belgian-born giraffes, 

 born during 1871-78: the last of these still 

 survives, and bears her twenty-three summers 

 with the elasticity of youth. 



It will thus be seen from the foregoing account 

 that the northern giraffe under common-sense 

 treatment does well enough in captivity, living to 

 a considerable age, and even breeding with 

 regularity, so that it seems probable that were it 

 not for the enormous cost of the animals (^700 or 

 ;^8oo apiece) they might be systematically bred in 



