THE GIRAFFE. 477 



inspection a slight interval is perceptible between the elevation 

 of the fore-leg and the hind-leg of the same side. 



The giraffe stands too tall to touch the ground with its 

 mouth, notwithstanding the length of the neck. Purchas, in 

 his Pilgrimage (1614, book vi. ch. 1), notices this fact, and it 

 has since been corroborated by too many observers of the 

 animal, both in Africa and in Europe, to induce us to admit 

 that this is a " vulgar error," as some have chosen to call it. 

 When the animal is desirous of cropping the short herbage, it 

 makes several vain attempts before it succeeds, and sometimes 

 does not succeed after all its efforts. In this attempt, it 

 stretches out its front legs gradually wider and wider apart, 

 till its chest appears strained to the utmost 5 it draws in the 

 crupper, protrudes the shoulders, and extends the neck down- 

 wards in a stiff, not perfectly straight, but rather curved position. 

 In this strange attitude it might extend its tongue, and by 

 means of that prehensile organ take a branch up from the 

 ground, but one cannot conceive that it could either graze upon 

 the short grass or drink. It is evident, indeed, that this is not 

 one of its natural positions, and that instead of being intended 

 to graze on a pasture, its whole organization adapts it for 

 feeding upon the leaves of tall trees, taking its food leaf by 

 leaf, and collecting them with its long tongue when they are 

 beyond reach of the mouth. Unlike the camel, it rejects the 

 thorns. Its ordinary food, in a state of nature, consists of the 

 leaves of a species of acacia (A. xariffiana), called by the natives 

 kanaap, by the colonists kameeldoorn, and of the fruit of the wild 

 apricot. The specimens in the Regent's Park Zoological 

 Gardens are fed with beans, hay, and grass, but of the latter 

 they eat only the tender parts, rejecting the coarse stalks. The 

 poor sickly specimen which was kept at Windsor a few years 

 ago, was fed with oats, barley, split beans, and ash leaves j and 

 it drank eight or ten quarts of milk daily. The giraffe is also 

 fond of rose-leaves, rice, raisins, and apples. It lies down when 

 it ruminates, and it is curious to watch the rapidity with which 

 the cud works its way up through the long neck to reach the 

 mouth. It is probable that, naturally, the giraffe's thirst is 



