MAMMALIA—CAMELOPARD. 353 
error of nature, if nature could ever commit error, or fai] 1m her designs. 
In their youth, the male and female giraffes remsrre cach cther in 
their exterior. A knot of long hair then terminetes their optuse 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 fernale, 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 
ofcolor. 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 ata 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. 4 
‘“‘Tn 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 would be useless to man in a state of domestication. M. Acerbi has 
an anecdote illustrative of this poimt :— 
“<«When at Alexandria, I had one day ordered the two giraffes (a male 
and female) taken at Darftir, to be led up and down 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 J then asked him 
in Arabic, ‘ Taib di? Do they please you?’ To which he rejoined, ‘ Mustaib,’ 
or, ‘I do not like them.’ Having desired my interpreter to inquire the 
grounds of k's disapproval, he answered, ‘that it did not carry like a horse, 
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 liking.’ ” 
This animal, though unknown to the Greeks, is described by Pliny and 
Oppian, and Julius Cesar brought one to Europe in the year of Rome 708, 
after which they were frequently used in the circus or triumphal proces- 
sions. Its ancient denomination was zurapha, from which the modern 
name of giraffe is derived. 
THE COMMON ANTELOPE) 
In size it is rather smaller than the fallow deer. Its color is a dusky 
brown, inixed with red; the belly, breast, and inside of the limbs, are white ; 

) Antilope cervicapra, Desm. The genus Antilype has eight lower and no upper inci- 
sors; no canines; twelve upper and twelve lower molars. MHorns in both sexes or in the 
males only, covering a solid long core, round, compressed, variously influted, and often 
marked by transverse annulations, or a projecting spiral ridge, sometimes bifurcated ; 
muzzle partly naked in the greater number; often lachrymal sinuses; ears large ; legs 
slender; two or four mamme. 
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