II.] INCIPIENT STRUCTURES. 29 



A careful observer of animal life who has long resided in 

 South Africa, explored the interior, and lived in the giraffe 

 country, has assured the Author that the giraffe has powers 

 of locomotion and endurance fully equal to those possessed 

 by any of the other Ungulata of that continent. It would 

 seem, therefore, that some of these other Ungulates ought 

 to have developed in a similar manner as to the neck, 

 under pain of being starved, when the long neck of the 

 giraffe was in its incipient stage. 



To this criticism it has been objected that different kinds 

 of animals are preserved, in the struggle for life, in very 

 different ways, and even that " high-reaching " may be 

 attained in more modes than one as, for example, by the 

 trunk of the elephant. This is indeed true, but then none 

 of the African Ungulata 1 have, nor do they appear ever to 

 have had, any proboscis whatsoever ; nor have they acquired 

 such a development as to allow them to rise on their hind 

 limbs and graze on trees in kangaroo-attitude, nor a power 

 of climbing, nor, as far as known, any other modification 

 tending to compensate for the comparative shortness of the 

 neck. Again, it may perhaps be said that leaf -eating forms 

 are exceptional, and that therefore the struggle to attain 

 high branches would not affect many Ungulates. But 

 surely, when these severe droughts necessary for the theory 

 occur, the ground vegetation is supposed to be exhausted ; 

 and, indeed, the giraffe is quite capable of feeding from off 

 the ground. So that, in these cases, the other Ungulata 

 must have taken to leaf-eating or have starved, and thus 

 must have had any accidental long-necked varieties 

 favoured and preserved exactly as the long-necked vari- 



1 The elephants of Africa and India, with their extinct allies, constitute 

 the order Proboscidea, and do not belong to the Ungulata. 



