OF THE NUBIAN GIRAFFE. 219 
The position of the Giraffe in the mammiferous series has hitherto been laid down 
from external characters alone, and one cannot wonder therefore that Zoologists should 
not be unanimous on this point. Cuvier assigns to the genus Camelopardalis a place 
between Cervus and Antilope. The horns of the Giraffe, in fact, are of a bony texture, 
covered with a periosteum and a hairy integument, like the growing antlers of the Deer ; 
but the tegumentary defence of the vascular periosteum is not deciduous, and the horns 
are consequently persistent, as in the Antelopes, in which the vascular covering of the 
bony core is protected by a sheath of horny substance. 
In regard to the existence of horns in the two sexes, we find a few examples among 
both Deer and Antelopes, which thus resemble the Giraffe. The horns of the Giraffe 
possess, however, certain characters which are peculiar to themselves ; the basis of the 
horn, for example, is articulated by synchondrosis to the frontal and parietal bones, and 
thus constitutes an epiphysis rather than an apophysis of the cranium. A broad, obtuse, 
osseous eminence in the middle of the forehead’ has been described as a third horn, 
and has been stated to be similarly articulated to the frontal bone, at least in the male 
Nubian Giraffe, and to be the only instance of a horn developed in the mesial line of 
the cranium, and over a cranial suture in the Mammiferous class. Cuvier says, ‘“‘ Au 
milieu du chanfrein, est un tubercle ou une troisiéme corne plus large et beaucoup plus 
courte, mais également articulée par suture*.” J. B. Fischer* describes the third arti- 
culated horn as peculiar to the male Giraffe. 
The general form of the Giraffe is modified with a special reference to its exigencies 
and habits, which are dependent upon its geographical position and the nature of its 
food; the prolongation and extensibility of the hair-clad muzzle, and the peculiar 
length, slenderness, and flexibility of the tongue, are in exact harmony with the 
kind of food on which it is destined to subsist. The oblique and narrow apertures 
of the nostrils, defended by the hair which is continued to their margins, and sur- 
rounded by cutaneous muscular fibres by which the animal can close them entirely and 
at will, form a beautiful provision for the defence of the air-passages, and the irritable 
membrane lining the olfactory cavity, against the fine particles of sand which the 
storms of the desert occasionally raise in suffocating clouds, and which man, and the 
animals compelled through his necessities to become occasional inhabitants of the 
desert, find so much difficulty in excluding. 
The position and peculiar prominence of the large, dark and lustrous eye of the 
' See the section of this protuberance in the figure of the cranium, pl. 40. 
2 Régne Animal, 2nded. tom.i. p. 266. The figure of the skull which illustrates the account of the Nubian 
Giraffe in the ‘Atlas zu Riippel’s Reise im Nordlichen Afrika,” pl. 9. p. 23., represents indeed this third tubercle 
as distinct and articulated by suture with the cranium ; but in the original cranium, from which the figure is 
taken, and which I have examined in the Frankfort Museum, I could not perceive any evidence of the existence 
of such a suture; the mesial protuberance had not been detached from an epiphyseal articular surface, but had 
been sawn off in order to be preserved in the stuffed skin. 
3 Synopsis Mammalium, p. 455. 
