ITS GROWING SCARCITY. 95 



threatened, as there is a proposal to put down tube- wells in 

 the waterless Kalahari, which, if successfully accomplished, 

 will open up the one great remaining stronghold of the 

 animal to the merciless hunter. Unless, therefore, efficient 

 and prompt measures are taken for its protection, there is 

 but too much reason to fear that the giraffe will ere long 

 be practically exterminated from this part of Africa ; 

 although, fortunately, it has a prospect of surviving for 

 many years to come in the Sudan and Kordofan. The 

 great majority of the giraffes killed at the present day in 

 southern Africa are shot solely for the sake of their skins, 

 which are now, owing to the practical extermination of 

 rhinoceroses south of the Zambesi, and the ever-increasing 

 scarcity of the hippopotamus, used in the manufacture of 

 the formidable South African whips known as jamboks. 

 The value of a skin usually varies, according to size and 

 quality, from 2 10s. to 4, although they have been 

 known to fetch 5 apiece ; and it is for the sake of such 

 paltry sums that one of the noblest and most strange of 

 mammals stands in imminent danger of extermination ! 



We may conclude this notice by mentioning that although 

 the giraffe was familiar to the Komans of the time of the 

 empire, by whom it was known as the camelopard, it 

 appears to have been almost completely lost sight of in 

 Europe in later times till the closing decades of the 

 eighteenth century, although a single example is stated to 

 have been exhibited alive in Florence some four centuries 

 ago. With that exception, it seems to have been generally 

 regarded as a fabulous animal until one was shot near the 

 Orange river in 1777 by an Englishman, and another by 

 the French naturalist, Le Vaillant, in 1784. From that 

 time onwards our knowledge of the animal and its habits 

 gradually increased, although it was not till the spring of 

 1836 that four living specimens from the Sudan were 

 brought alive to London, where some of their descendants 

 lived continuously till 1892, since which date the species 

 .has been unrepresented in the Regent's Park. 



