OF THE NUBIAN GIRAFFE. 243 
this supposed affinity of the Giraffe ; for the callosities on the sternum and knees which 
have been ascribed to the Giraffe have no existence in nature. Now, as to the neck, 
the value of its longitude as a mark of affinity to the Camel disappears when we come 
to investigate its structure. The long and singularly inflected neck of the Camel offers 
a peculiar and remarkable modification in its vertebral column, and the long-necked ex- 
tinct quadruped (Macrauchenia,) which has been discovered to participate in that struc- 
ture, thus manifests a real affinity to the Camelide ; but we find no such correspondence 
in the structure of the jointed pillar of the neck of the Giraffe ; it is in all respects a 
mere adaptive modification of the vertebral structure of the neck of the Deer. There re- 
mains, then, only the want of spurious hoofs as an indication of the affinity of the Giraffe 
with the Camel. But in how many important particulars of internal organization might we 
not have expected to have met with evidences of this relationship if it had truly existed 
in nature: the pharyngeal sacculus,—the congeries of water-cells in the rumen,—the 
depth and complication of those of the recticulum,—the suppression of the psalterium as 
a third distinct cavity of the stomach,—the marked difference in the structure and dis- 
position of the lining membrane of the cardiac and pyloric portions of the abomasus,— 
the subdivision of the under surface of the lobes of the liver, observed by Hunter and 
Meckel in the Camel,—and lastly, the modifications of the generative apparatus, as the 
undivided prostate, in the male, the conformation of the ovarian capsule and the absence 
of cotyledonal processes in the uterus of the female ;—all these are peculiarities in the 
organization of the Camelide among the Ruminants, to which some slight approxima- 
tion should have been presented in the corresponding parts of the Giraffe, if its naturak 
position were really between the Camelide and any of the groups of the true Ruminantia. 
But the truth is, that many of the true Ruminants approximate more nearly to the 
Camel in their internal structure than does the Giraffe ; the Ox, for example, in the 
depth of the cells of its reticulum, and the smaller Musk-deer, as will be shown in another 
communication, in a more important and more characteristic modification of the 
stomach. The Reindeer and some other species of Cervus deviate in the structure of 
the stomach perhaps the widest from the Cameline organization, and the Giraffe parti- 
cipates with them in this deviation. With regard to the affinity of the Giraffe to the 
different groups of horned Ruminants, the length of the tail and the persistency of the 
horns point out a resemblance to the Antelopes ; their existence in the two sexes, on 
the other hand, is a rare condition, which the Giraffe possesses in common with the 
Reindeer. Perhaps the occasional presence of a gall-bladder, as observed in the first 
Giraffe dissected by me, is the best evidence of the affinity of the Giraffe to the Ante- 
lope tribe. 
