Quadrupeds. 8221 



Has the Giraffe Two Horns or TJiree ? 

 "Who shall decide when doctors disagree?" 



This question does not appear fraught with great difficulty, and yet 

 it has agitated the scientific world for some time past, and appears as 

 far from a solution as ever : it is brought prominently before a more 

 extended public in the seventh number of the ' Intellectual Observer,' 

 by Dr. Cobbold, who appears to have thoroughly investigated the sub- 

 ject, and who states the pros and cons with great clearness as well as 

 fairness. The theory that the giraife is possessed of three horns 

 originated, as I believe, with that illustrious traveller, Dr. Riippell, 

 who declared in the most emphatic manner that a third horn existed 

 in the adult male : these are his words : — " The horns constitute the 

 principal generic character, they being formed by distinct bones united 

 to the frontals and parietals by a very obvious suture, and exhibiting 

 throughout, the same structure as the other bones. In both sexes one 

 of these abnormal bones is situated on each branch of the coronal 

 suture, and the male possesses an additional one, p/^c^t/ more ante- 

 riorly, and occupying the middle of the frontal suture.^'' Cuvier 

 entirely coiToborates this view of the case, and says without any hesi- 

 tation, " In the middle of the forehead is a tubercle or third horn, 

 broader and much shorter than the others, but articulated in the same 

 manner.^' Professor Owen, to whose judgment almost every zoologist 

 will be predisposed to bow, refuses entirely to adopt this view : writing 

 of the giraffe, in ' Brande's Dictionary of Sciences,' he says that until 

 lately we find it described as having callosities on the knees and 

 sternum, and " as a kind of lusus with three horns, of which one, being 

 articulated over a suture in the middle line of the forehead, seemed to 

 lake away the chima3rical nature of the unicorn, by indicating a tran- 

 sition to that heraldic monster. Tlie truth is, however, that the giraffe 

 possesses neither those callosities nor this median articulated horn." 

 1 have italicised those passages which express in the sti'ongest manner 

 the discrepancy of opinion on this moot question. 



Dr. Cobbold, after citing the authorities above noticed, expresses 

 his own opinion in favour of what may be called the Ruppellian theory, 

 assigning his reasons for doing so in the paragraphs which follow : — 



"1. In the young male giraffe which died last year at the Zoological 

 Society's Gardens, Regent's Park, there was only a slight thickening 

 of the subdermal periosteal tissues immediately above the central 

 frontal eminence; but it was sufficiently thickened to allow of detach- 



