106 BIG GAME SHOOTING 



in a genus of its own. The specimen sent home in 

 1901 by Sir Harry Johnston, now set up and to be 

 seen in the Natural History Museum, is believed to 

 be an immature animal. It stands 5 feet at the 

 withers, and an adult okapi would, therefore, be 

 probably nearer 6 feet in height. This extraordinary 

 animal, discovered in the recesses of the Semliki, 

 a part of the great Congo forest, is of a most 

 ancient and primitive type. By the shape of the 

 skull and the teeth it is manifestly a near ally to the 

 giraffes, but the shape and configuration remind one 

 much more of the hartebeest and the bastard harte- 

 beest families than of the giraffes. The general 

 body-colouring, a rich, glossy, purplish brown, at 

 once reminded the writer of the tsesseby or bastard 

 hartebeest, while the high withers and sloping 

 quarters bear striking resemblance to those of a 

 hartebeest or tsesseby. The clean, slender legs and 

 the neat hoofs are again distinctly antelope-like ; but 

 against this must be set the fact that, like the giraffe, 

 the okapi has no false hoofs. From its make and 

 shape I should judge this animal to be a first-rate 

 galloper, possessed, like the tsesseby, of great speed 

 and stoutness. On the other hand, the head, in 

 shape, but not in colouring (which is fawn upon the 

 sides, reddish upon the ears and forehead), is mani- 

 festly more like that of the giraffe than any other 

 animal. The eyes, however, instead of being large 

 and melting like the giraffe's, are small and ex- 

 pressionless. The beast is rendered yet more 

 bewilderingly curious by the bizarre, transverse 



