MAMMALIA — CAME LOP A RD. 353 



error of nature, if nature could ever commit error, or fail in her designs. 

 In their youth, the male and female giraffes resemble each other in 

 their exterior. A knot of long hair then terminates their obtuse horns ; 

 this peculiarity the female preserves for some time, but at the age of three 

 years the male loses it. At first, the hide is of a light red, but it deepens in 

 color as the animal advances in age, and, at length, it is of a yellow brown 

 in the female, and of a brown bordering on black in the male. The male 

 may, even at a distance, be distinguished from the female by this difference 

 of color. As to the arrangement and form of the spots, the skin varies in 

 both sexes. The female does not stand so high as the male, and the frontal 

 prominence is less marked. She has four teats ; and, according to the 

 account given by the natives, she has one young one at a birth, with which 

 she goes twelve months." 



Several have been carried to Europe. One was sent as a present to the 

 King of England by the Pacha of Egypt, and arrived there in 1827. It died 

 recently. 



" In one point all the observers of the European giraffes agree — that they 

 never make any noise whatever. Further, they appear to consider that the 

 animal Avould be useless to man in a state of domestication. M. Acerbi has 

 an anecdote illustrative of this point : — 



"' When at Alexandria, I had one day ordered the two giraffes (a male 



and female) taken at Darfur, to be led up and do^vn the square in front of 



my house ; among the crowd collected on the occasion were some Bedouins 



of the Desert. On inquiring of one of them whether he had ever seen ^ 



similar animals before — he replied that he had not; and I then asked him 



in Arabic, ' Taib di ? Do they please you V To Avhich he rejoined, ' Mustailt,' 



or, 'I do not like them.' Having desired my interpreter to inquire rhe 



grounds of his disapproval, he answered, ' that it did not carry like a liorse, 



it did not serve for field labors like an ox, did not yield hair like a camel, 



• . . . . 



nor flesh and milk like a goat ; and on this account it was not to his iihng.' " 



This animal, though unknown to the Greeks, is described by Piiny and 

 Oppian, and Julius Cessar brought one to Europe in the year of Kome 708, 

 after which they were frequently used in the circus or triumphal proces- 

 sions. Its ancient denomination was zurapha, from vv^hich Ae modern 

 name of giraffe is derived. 



THE COMMON ANTELOPE.' 

 In size it is rather smaller than the fallow deer. It5 color is a dusky 

 brown, mixed with red ; the belly, breast, and inside of the limbs, are white ; 



1 Antilope cervicapra, Desm. The j^'cnus Anlilope has eight lower and no upper inci- 

 sors; no canines; twelve upper and twelve lower molars. Horns in both sexes or in the 

 ■males only, covering a solid lon^ core, round, compressed, variously influted, and often 

 marked ty transverse annulations, or a projecting spiral ridfe, sometimes bifurcated ; 

 muzzle partly naked in the greater number ; often lachrymal sinuses ; ears large ; legs 

 slender ; two or four mammee. 



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