OF THE NUBIAN GIRAFFE. 245 
satisfaction with which the mock leaves and flowers so obtained are masticated, the 
tongue would seem by no means to enjoy the sensitive in the same degree as the motive 
powers: the difference in the size of the nerves of sense and motion of that organ 
already mentioned accords with these habits of the living animal. The Giraffes have a 
habit, in captivity at least, of plucking the hairs out of each other’s manes and tails, 
and swallowing them. I know not whether we must attribute to a fondness for epider- 
mic productions, or to the tempting green colour of the parts, the following ludicrous 
circumstance which happened to a fine peacock which was kept in the Giraffe's paddock. 
As the bird was spreading his tail in the sunbeams and curveting in presence of his 
mate, one of the Giraffes stooped his long neck, and entwining his flexile tongue round 
a bunch of the gaudy plumes, suddenly lifted the bird into the air, then giving him a 
shake, disengaged five or six of the tail-feathers, when down fluttered the astonished 
peacock and scuffled off with the remains of his train draggling humbly after him. 
When the Giraffe ruminates, he masticates the bolus for about fifty seconds, applying 
to it from forty to fifty rotatory movements of the lower jaw, and then swallows it: 
after an interval of three or four seconds a second bolus is regurgitated; the rapid 
passage of this mass through the long cervical part of the wsophagus is readily visible ; 
and the physiologist cannot fail to be struck with this instance of the surprising swift- 
ness with which the contractions of the muscular fibres of the gullet succeed each other. 
By attentively watching, we may perceive a slight contraction of the abdominal parietes 
accompanying the action of the stomach by which the regurgitation is commenced. 
This action of the abdominal parietes in rumination is much stronger in the Camel. 
It is a singular fact, and one which has not hitherto been noticed, that the Cameline 
Ruminants differ from the true Ruminants in the mode in which the cud is chewed: in 
the Camels it is ground alternately in opposite directions from side to side: in the 
Ozen, Sheep, Antelopes, and Deer, the lower jaw is ground against the upper in the 
same direction by a rotatory motion: the movements may be successively from right 
to left, or from left to right, but they are never regularly alternate throughout the mas- 
ticatory process, as in the Camels: and here, again, in the rotatory motion of the jaws 
of the Giraffe while masticating the cud, we have evidence of its affinity to the horned 
Ruminants. 
Each of the Giraffes eats daily eighteen pounds of clover-hay, and eighteen pounds 
of a mixed vegetable diet, consisting of carrots, mangle-wurzel, barley, split beans and 
onions ; and drinks about four gallons of water. 
When the Giraffes arrived at the Zoological Gardens, I perceived, by comparing 
the incisors and anterior molars with those in the skull of an adult animal, that they 
belonged to the deciduous series. The two middle incisors were shed in the month of 
March, 1838, when the animals were little more than three years old; the two adjoin- 
ing incisors were shed in the month of July; the first deciduous molares in October, 
and the second deciduous molares in November and December of the same year. At 
VOL, I1.—PART III. 2k 
