320 AFRICAN GAME ANIMALS 



Giraffes are such strange, picturesque creatures, and so 

 harmless that they ought to be killed only when absolutely 

 needed for scientific purposes. To ride them down in a 

 headlong run is good sport, of course. Their leisurely, 

 awkward-looking gallop carries them along at a fast gait; 

 the tail twisting, the neck thrust forward at an angle, the 

 hind legs coming up outside the fore ones with piston-like 

 regularity. Buffalo Jones, with his cowboys. Means and 

 Loveless, roped a giraffe, as they did a rhino and a lioness. 

 Such feats rank even higher than the feats of the Masai and 

 Nandi in killing lions with their spears on foot, and the 

 feats of the Hamran horsemen in killing all big game with 

 the sword; and from the standpoint of bodily prowess, all 

 of these feats stand far ahead of the feats of the rifleman. 



The flesh measurements of the largest bull from Ulu 

 were: head and body, 13 feet 4 inches; tail, 3 feet 2 

 inches; hind foot, 4 feet 5 inches; ear, 9^^ inches; height, 

 17 feet 2 inches. The second largest bull had a height of 

 16 feet 3 inches. The skulls of these two specimens are 

 quite the same in size and have a length of 25^^ inches. 

 The adult female from the Loita Plains measured in the 

 flesh: 14 feet 7 inches in height; 11 feet 8 inches in length 

 of head and body; tail, 3 feet; hind foot, 3 feet 9 inches; 

 and ear, 9 inches in length. Besides the six specimens at 

 the National Museum others have been examined from the 

 Athi Plains and Maungu Station at the American Museum 

 of Natural History of New York, and a mounted specimen 

 from Kilimanjaro at the British Museum. In the field 

 herds have been seen near the railway stations of Voi, 

 Simba, Makindu, Kui, and Ulu, in the Rift Valley, near 

 Mount Suswa, and on the Loita Plains. They occur prac- 

 tically everywhere throughout the desert nyika of the coast 

 and inland through the bush country to the edge of the 

 grassy plains up to an altitude of 7,000 feet. 



