THE OKAPI'S ANTLERS 13 



with coarse black hair. No other horn-bearing mam- 

 mal no antelope, buffalo, ox, sheep, goat, stag, or 

 other deer is born with horns, so far as we know, 

 and we know a good many of these animals well. 

 Before birth the young giraffe's horns are flat from 

 back to front, and quite soft and flexible. They 

 can be pressed backwards, so as to be made to lie 

 flat on the head. Directly after birth a hard, bony 

 deposit commences inside the horn, and after some 

 years' growth it becomes firmly fused to the skull. But 

 the hard bony core never breaks through the hairy skin 

 which covers it. The bony core of the okapi's pair of 

 horns, on the contrary, does " cut " or break through 

 the skin, exposing a sharp, hard point, a quarter of an 

 inch in length. In the deer tribe, as everyone knows, 

 the point of the bony horn-core spreads out as a large, 

 branching growth from which all covering is shed, and 

 forms the "antler." The deer tribe shed the antlers 

 every year from [the top of the horn-core, and grow 

 a new and larger pair to take the place of the old 

 ones. Moreover, in them the horn-core itself is a 

 stem-like upgrowth of the bone of the skull (of the 

 frontal bone). In the okapi and the giraffe the 

 horn-core is a separate bone, free at first and fusing 

 with the skull only when the adult condition is 

 reached. The little antlers or bare-points of the okapi's 

 horn-cones or cores seem to be shed in segments as 

 growth goes on, and are only minute things compared 

 with the antlers of stags. The giraffe's horns, on the 

 other hand, always remain covered by skin and hair 

 and have a broad, rounded top, not a sharp point. 



The real clinching feature in the okapi and giraffe 

 which decides at once their close affinity to one another 

 is found in the outer tooth on each side of the group of 

 eight teeth placed in the front of the lower jaw. In 

 both this particular tooth has a broad, chisel-like crown, 

 divided into two portions by a deep vertical slit. None 



