82 



RUMINANTS AND THEIR DISTRIBUTION. 



development when they once obtained an entry into Africa, 

 on account of the immense area open to them, in which 

 there was no competition by any other ruminants except 

 buffaloes and giraffes. 



To the zoologist Africa is indeed a 

 country characterized by the number 

 of animals living there which have 

 disappeared from other regions ; and 

 there is no better instance of this 

 survival than the giraffe, a ruminant 

 that, as regards its cranial appendages, 

 stands midway between the hollow- 

 horned group and the deer.* We are 

 all familiar with the ungainly and yet 

 beautiful form of the giraffe ; but it is 

 probably less well known that giraffes 

 once roamed over Greece, Persia, 

 India, and China, where, as in Africa 

 at the present day, they were accom- 

 panied by ostriches and hippopotami. 

 And here again we are confronted by 

 the problem how to account for the 

 disappearance from regions apparently 

 exactly suited to their habits, of all 

 these animals. The giraffe is, how- 

 ever, not only the sole survivor of 

 several extinct species of its own 

 kind, but it likewise represents a lost 

 group of ruminants, intermediate between the horned and 

 antlered Old World types. The head-quarters of this 

 group was India, where, among other forms, occurs the 

 gigantic sivathere, rivalling the elephant in bulk, and 

 characterized by its two pairs of horns (Fig. 29), of 

 which the hindmost were branching and antler-like, 

 although apparently never shed, and probably covered 

 during life with skin and hair. 



If our attention has been turned to Africa as the head- 

 quarters of antelopes and giraffes, it must be directed to 



FIG. 28. Horns of 

 G- a z e 1 1 e. (From 

 Griinther.) 



* See the following chapter. 



