922 



THE UNGULATES, OR HOOFED MAMMALS 



graceful giraffes issue from the forest a little distance beyond, and stalk across the 

 intervening flat, swishing their long tails to and fro, on their way down to the 

 water. It is a curious sight to watch these long-legged animals drinking, and one 

 that I have had several opportunities of enjoying. Though their necks are long, 

 they are not sufficiently so to enable them to reach the water without straddling 

 their legs wide apart. In doing this, they sometimes place one foot in front , and 

 the other as far back as possible, and then by a series of little jerks widen the dis- 

 tance between the two, until they succeed in getting their mouths down to the 

 water; sometimes they sprawl their legs out sideways in a similar manner. " This 

 position having to be assumed, not only when drinking, but likewise when the ani- 

 mal desires to pick up a leaf from the ground, or on the rare occasions when it grazes. 

 Writing at a time when giraffes were still abundant in South Africa, Gordon 



Gumming gives the following 

 graphic account of their habits and 

 appearance. He says that, ' ' in 

 countries unmolested by the in- 

 trusive foot of man, the giraffe is 

 found generally in herds varying 

 from twelve to sixteen; but I have 

 not unfrequently met with thirty, 

 and on one occasion I counted forty 

 individuals together, this, however, 

 was a chance, and sixteen may be 

 reckoned as the average number of a 

 herd. These herds are composed of 

 giraffes of various sizes, from the 

 young one of nine or ten feet in 

 height to the dark chestnut-colored 

 old bull of the herd, whose exalted 

 head towers above his companions, 

 generally attaining a height of 

 upward of eighteen feet. The fe- 

 males are of lower stature, and more 

 delicately formed than the males, 

 their height averaging from sixteen 

 to seventeen feet. Some writers 

 have discovered ugliness and a want 

 of grace in the giraffe, but I con- 

 sider that he is one of the most 

 strikingly beautiful animals in the 

 creation, and when a herd is seen 



SOUTH-AFRICAN "GIRAFFE/ ' C ^^ scattered through a grove of the 



picturesque parasol-topped acacias 



h adorn their native plains, and on whose uppermost shoots they are enabled to 

 browse through the colossal height with which nature has so admirably endowed 



