THE CREATURE GOD FORGOT 171 



less with a leg she herself had broken in her wild 

 efforts to keep off the lions. 



The natives tell of a certain comradeship that 

 occasionally seems to exist between elephants and 

 giraffes. There are certainly traits of similarity 

 between the two animals. Both are inclined to live 

 and let live. Both have dignity and decency in their 

 relations among themselves. Both make excellent 

 parents. And both are grotesque survivors of a pre- 

 historic age of mammals. 



Schillings, the African traveller and explorer, 

 relates how he fell in with a big male giraffe consort- 

 ing regularly with a pair of elephants for mutual 

 friendship and protection. Probably the giraffe 

 could see further and better than the elephants ; and 

 the elephants in their timi prevented attack by the 

 giraffe's worst enemy, the lion. 



Another curious belief among some of the natives 

 is that giraffes talk to one another by means of their 

 tails. It is true that when the bull of a giraffe herd 

 sights an enemy he at once emerges from the tree 

 foliage amongst which he may have been feeding and 

 begins whisking his long bushy tail about at a great 

 rate. When the giraffe is suspicious there is also a 

 great switching of his tail. 



