CHAPTER XVI 



THE GIRAFFE AND OK API 



THE GIRAFFE 



BY H. A. BRYDEN 



G 



IRAFFES, which are found only in the 

 continent of Africa, are the tallest of 

 all living creatures. They belong to 

 the Ruminants, or Cud-chewers, and naturalists 

 are inclined to place them somewhere between 

 the Deer Family and the Hollow-horned 

 Ruminants, in which latter are to be found 

 oxen, buffaloes, and antelopes. Riitimeyer, the 

 Swiss naturalist, once defined them as " a most 

 fantastic form of deer," which is, perhaps, as 

 good a definition of them as one is likely 

 to hit upon. Fossil discoveries show that, in 

 ages long remote, great giraffe-like creatures, 

 some of them bearing horns or antlers, roamed 

 widely in the south of Europe, Persia, India 

 and even China. 



Of living giraffes, two species have thus 

 far been identified, the SOUTHERN or CAPE 

 GIRAFFE, with a range extending from Bechua- 

 naland and the Transvaal to British East 

 Africa and the Soudan ; and the NUBIAN or 

 NORTHERN GIRAFFE, found chiefly in East 

 Africa, Somaliland, and the country between 

 Abyssinia and the Nile. The southern giraffe, 

 which, from its recent appearance in the Gar- 

 dens of the Zoological Society, is now the more 

 familiar of the two animals, has a creamy or 

 yellowish-white ground-colour, marked by 

 irregular blotches, which vary in colour, in animals of different ages, from lemon-fawn to orange- 

 tawny, and in older specimens to a very dark chestnut. Old bulls and occasionally old cows 

 grow extremely dark with age, and at a distance appear almost black upon the back and shoulders. 

 The northern giraffe is widely different, the coloration being usually a rich red-chestnut, 

 darker with age, separated by a fine network of white lines, symmetrically arranged in 

 polygonal patterns. At no great distance this giraffe, instead of having the blotchy or dappled 

 appearance of the southern giraffe, looks almost entirely chestnut in colour. Again, the 

 southern giraffe has only two horns, while the northern species usually develops a third, 

 growing from the centre of the forehead. These horns, .which are covered with hair in both 

 species, and tufted black at the tips, are, in the youthful days of the animal, actually 

 separable from the bones of the head. As the animal arrives at maturity, they become firmly 



264 



h Mi:, E. J. Buk 



SOUTHERN GIRAFFE LYING DOWN 



This girajfe was a present to Queen Victoria; it only lived fourteen 

 days after its arrival 



