38 ANIMAL SKETCHES. CHAP. 



Fair-hair's big friends, the elephant, the giraffe, and the 

 hippopotamus, will be very new to those who do me the 

 honour to read these pages. Perhaps my information will 

 be not much more novel than that of the nine-years 

 maiden when she said so impressively, " No, it isn't that, 

 it's his nose." But after all my object is not so much to 

 give information as to awaken interest. And if I induce 

 a few young folk to go to the Zoo and look at Long-nose, 

 Long- neck, and Stumpy with a new interest, and with 

 some wish to learn more about them than I have here 

 the space to tell, I shall not have written these lines 

 in vain. 



The three animals which, at Fair-hair's suggestion, I 

 have brought into association, afford good examples of that 

 essential similarity which underlies well-marked and even 

 conspicuous diversity. Who would have supposed that 

 the number of joints or vertebral bones in the neck of the 

 giraffe and of the hippopotamus, of Long- neck and of 

 Stumpy, was the same ? Yet this is so. Each has seven 

 bones, as you may see for yourself in the Natural History 

 Museum the same number that Long-nose has, that you 

 and I have, and that nearly all mammalian animals have. 

 Watch the giraffe as he bends his long neck to one side. 

 You may see some indications of the seven straight long 

 joints. Very different is the graceful neck of the swan, in 

 which there are a great number of short bones very 

 beautifully and perfectly hinged together. The neck of 

 the swan is therefore very much more supple than that of 

 the giraffe, and its sweeping curves are unbroken by 

 angularities. 



Look, too, at the limbs. How very different the long, 

 slender legs of the giraffe from the massive hinged 

 pedestals of the elephant. Half-way down the fore-leg 

 of the giraffe is the so-called knee, making, when the limb 



