318 NATURAL HISTORY OF AFRICA. 



by a circuit took the animals in front, that he might stop 

 their way, while I was to attack them in the rear. I had 

 almost got within shot of them when they perceived me, 

 and began to fly in the direction we expected. But their 

 flight was so beyond all idea extraordinary, that, between 

 laughter, astonishment, and delight, I almost forgot my de- 

 signs upon the harmless creatures' lives. From the extra- 

 vagant disproportion between the height of the fore to that 

 of the hinder parts, and of the height to the length of the 

 animal, great obstacles are presented to its moving with any 

 degree of swiftness. When Le Vaillant asserts that he has 

 seen the giraffe trot, he spares me any farther trouble in 

 proving that this animal never presented itself alive before 

 him.* How in the world should an animal, so dispropor- 

 tioned in height before and behind, trot 1 The giraffe can 

 only gallop, as I can affirm from my own experience, having 

 seen between forty and fifty at different times, both in their 

 slow and hasty movement, for they only stop when they are 

 feeding quietly. But this gallop is so heavy and unwieldy, 

 and seems performed with so much labour, that in a distance 

 of more than a hundred paces, comparing the ground cleared 

 with the size of the animal and of the surrounding objects, 

 it might almost be said that a man goes faster on foot. 

 The heaviness of the movement is only compensated by the 

 length of the steps, each one of which clears, on a moderate 

 computation, from twelve to sixteen feet." A tolerably 

 good horse overtakes the giraffe without difficulty, especially 

 over rising ground. 



Camelopards were known to the Romans, and were ex- 

 hibited in the Circsean Games by Caesar the dictator. The 

 Emperor Gordian afterward exhibited ten at a single show , 

 and tolerably accurate figures of this animal, both in a 

 browsing and grazing attitude, have been handed dovm by 

 the Praenestine pavement. During the darker ages, and for 

 some centuries after the revival of learning, it seems to 

 have remained unknown to Europeans ; but, about the mid- 

 dle of the sixteenth century, the emperor of Germany, Fre- 



* It would be more proper, and equally logical, rather to infer that 

 Le Vaillant misapplied the term which he made use of to designate tlie 

 movements of the camelopard, than that he imagined himself to have seen 

 an animal alive which had uever presented itself to him in that condi- 

 tion.— Ed. 



