THE ' ZOO ' OF LONG AGO 1 1 



and brought before the Royal Society within ten years' 

 time. Unless it be so captured and "tabled" it 

 matters very little whether it exists or not. It must be 

 " discovered " in order to become really interesting. 



6. Giraffes and the Ofyapi 



The baby giraffe at the gardens in the Regent's Park 

 is a most interesting and beautiful creature. In that 

 respect she only resembles on a small scale her grown-up 

 relatives. Next to elephants, giraffes take precedence 

 for strangeness, beauty, and imposing size. Certainly 

 they have done so with me ever since I turned one 

 Sunday afternoon long ago from the great novelty of 

 the day, the first hippopotamus sent from Egypt, round 

 whom the world of fashion was crowding, and gazed 

 into the beautiful eyes that hung over me, supported by 

 a gracefully-curving neck. My tender regard for the 

 beautiful creature was not shaken even when I felt a 

 sudden jerk to the elastic band passing under my chin 

 and saw my new Leghorn straw hat, with its ornamental 

 bunch of Egyptian wheat and broad pink ribbon, dis- 

 appear between the lips of the beauty. A slow right 

 and left movement of the jaw followed, accompanied by 

 a tranquil kindly look suggestive of a desire for more. 

 That was one of the old stock of Regent's Park giraffes, 

 who bred freely at the gardens and made money for the 

 society. They died out thirty years ago or more. 

 From time to time since then there have been one or 

 two mis-shapen giraffes in London, but they did not 

 eat children's hats nor produce young of their own. A 

 new dynasty of Kordofan giraffes has now arrived, and 

 a better spirit prevails. 



The most interesting thing about the giraffe is the 

 okapi. The remark sounds absurd, but it is true. The 

 okapi is the new animal from the Congo forest of 



