ORDER ARTIODACTYLA : EVEN -TOED UNGULATES 501 



North Transvaal Giraffe. "Kameel" (Boer) 



GIRAFFA CAMELOPARDALIS WARDi Lydekker 



Giraffa camelopardalis wardi Lydekker, Proc. Zool. Soc. London 1904, vol. 1, 



p. 221, 1904. ("Northern Transvaal.") 

 FIGS.: Harris, 1839, pi. facing p. 239; Millais, 1895, p. 161, fig.; Lydekker, 



1904, pi. 15, fig. 2, pp. 222-223, figs. 34-35; Lankester, 1907, p. 122, fig. 45; 



Lydekker, 1908, p. 367, fig. 73; Lydekker and Elaine, 1914, vol. 3, p. 255, 



fig. 45 B, Nat. Hist. Mag., vol. 2, no. 10, p. 65, fig., 1929 (subsp.?). 



This Giraffe (if the provisional range here assigned to -it is 

 more or less correct) survives in fair numbers in the Kruger 

 National Park; there are likewise some in the southeast and the 

 northwest of Southern Rhodesia. 



"A large and dark chocolate-coloured Giraffe, with the frontal 

 horn in old bulls represented by a low irregular boss, the posterior, 

 or occipital, horns enormously developed, and the body-spots 

 broken up into irregular stars." It is also characterized "by the 

 great length and massiveness of the main horns," which are 7 

 inches long. "The general colour and arrangement of the spots 

 on the head and neck are much the same as on the body. Com- 

 pared with the Cape Giraffe the spots are much more irregularly 

 formed and star-like, there is more white in the neighbourhood 

 of the ear, and the occipital horns" are each "capped by a black 

 patch." (Lydekker, 1904a, pp. 221-224.) 



The ranges of G. c. wardi and G. c. capensis do not appear 

 to have been delimited with any particular degree of definiteness. 

 The Giraffes of the Transvaal, of the adjacent part of Portuguese 

 East Africa, and of Southern Rhodesia will be treated provision- 

 ally under the former name in the present account. This range 

 corresponds somewhat to the Southeast Veldt District of Bowen 

 (1933, pp. 256, 260). 



Transvaal. In 1836 Harris met with the Giraffe "in what are 

 now the Marico and Rustenburg districts of the Transvaal" (W. L. 

 Sclater, 1900, vol. 1, p. 261). "The giraffe is by no means a com- 

 mon animal, even at its head-quarters. We seldom found them 

 without having followed the trail, and never saw more than five- 

 and-thirty in a day." (Harris, 1839, p. 240.) 



"In South Africa it is not now to be encountered until the trav- 

 eller reaches the north-eastern border of the Transvaal. In the 

 country there adjacent, Portuguese South-East Africa, Mashuna- 

 land, Matabeleland, ... it is still found more or less abundantly." 

 (Bryden, 1899, pp. 501-502.) 



"Up to a year or two ago there were plenty of giraffes in the 

 Sabi River district of the eastern Transvaal .... If any are 

 still surviving there now, they are strictly preserved; in Portuguese 



