218 MR. R. OWEN ON THE ANATOMY 
knowledge of these facts is derived, less from the descriptions of the naturalist, than from 
the satire of the poet, the records and medals of political history, or the mosaic pavements 
and other ornaments of public buildings. We can scarcely perceive in the works of the 
Roman philosophers a trace of that love of natural knowledge which induced the pre- 
ceptor of Alexander the Great to investigate and record the habits and structure of the 
animals which that monarch’s conquests and just appreciation of science placed at his 
disposal. A greater contrast cannot be found in the literature of natural history than 
is afforded between the description of the Elephant, in the Historia Animalium, and the 
crude and casual notice by Pliny of those rarer animals which more extended conquests 
brought within his reach and observation. The spectacles and slaughters of the amphi- 
theatre, such as have been alluded to, were continued uninterruptedly for more than 
four hundred years, and must have afforded to the Roman philosophers, ample oppor- 
tunities of making observations on the form and organization of foreign animals : yet 
it seems that these animals, once killed, were applied to no further use. Everything, 
in short, that such occasions could afford to debase the human mind and heart was 
extracted from them, but nothing to elevate or improve. 
It is surely a just subject of congratulation, that in these later times worthier mo- 
tives for bringing rare animals within the sphere of our observation have been asso- 
ciated with happier and better results. Our national menageries not only add to,the 
innocent pleasures of the people, by gratifying ordinary curiosity, or ministering to the 
—perhaps somewhat spurious—enjoyment which arises from a consciousness of per- 
sonal security while standing at arms’ length from the encaged monarch of beasts, or 
affording the amusements of witnessing the sagacious feats of the ponderous Elephant 
or the nimble antics of the Ape ; but their chief object is to give to the scientific inquirer 
the means of determining the relations which subsist between habits and organization, 
and to trace the modifications of form and structure by which each species is adapted 
to its destined sphere in the wide and diversitied field of nature. These establishments 
afford at once the opportunity of combining observation of the living animal with dissec- 
tion of the dead. It is true, indeed, that the menagerie offers a very imperfect substi- 
tute for those opportunities and advantages which the intelligent traveller enjoys in 
witnessing the habits of a species in its free state and native wilds ; but, on the other 
hand, the conveniences for prosecuting anatomical inquiries are much greater, and the 
neglect of the latter means of advancing zoological knowledge would now be much 
more reprehensible, than in the time of Pliny. 
The scientific publications of the Zoological Society give ample proof that its mem- 
bers have not been indifferent to the opportunities which a choice menagerie affords of 
prosecuting anatomical researches into the structure of rare and interesting animals. 
In the present communication I propose to give the results of a dissection of the male 
Giraffe which died in the gardens at Regent’s Park, and of various parts of a male and 
a female Giraffe which died at the Surrey Zoological Gardens, and which were sent to 
me for examination by the kindness of Mr. Cross. 
