1905.] ON THE XIGERIAN AND KILIMAXJARO GIRAFFES, 119 



1. On tbo Nigerian and Kilimanjaro Giraffes. 

 By R. Lydekkkr. 



[Received January 7, 1905.] 

 (Plates XI. & XII.*) 



Since the appearance in last year's ' Proceedings ' t of my paper 

 on the subspecies of Giraffa ca7nelo2)ardalis, the Biitish (Natural 

 History) Museum has received the skins and portions of the 

 skeletons of two Girafles belonging to forms hitherto insufficiently 

 represented in the collection. The descriptions and figures of 

 these two specimens will serve to complete the aforesaid paper, so 

 far as anything connected with the zoology of mammals can be 

 said to be complete. 



The first specimen comprises the skin, skull, and limb-bones of 

 an adult bull of the Nigerian, or western, race of the Giraffe 

 {Giraffa camelopardalis pe7~alta), shot by Captain G. B. Gosling 

 in Nigeria, and presented by that gentleman to the Museum, 

 The head and neck have been mounted, and form the subject of 

 PI. XII. figs. 1 (& 2. The second specimen is a female (apparently 

 not full-grown) of the Kilimanjaro Giraffe {G. c. tip'pelskirchi)^ 

 presented by Mr. T. F. Victor Buxton, by whom the animal was 

 killed in British East Africa last year. Of the former i-ace, the 

 only example hitherto known is the type female, of which the skull 

 and limb-bones were alone preserved ; while of the second no 

 coloured figure has, so far as I am aware, been hitherto published. 



Captain Gosling's specimen, which is that of a fully adult, 

 although not a very old, animal, serves to show that the Nigerian 

 Giraffe belongs to the northern, or typical, group of the species — • 

 that is to say, the one in which the bulls have a large median 

 horn, and the legs in both sexes are white, or nearly so. When 

 describing the skeleton of the type female, Mr. Tiiomas + was 

 of opinion that the lengths of the skull and of the hind cannon- 

 bone indicated an unusually large form of Giraffe. This, how- 

 ever, is not borne out by the corresponding bones of the male. 

 The skull of the latter is, for example, not very markedly larger 

 than that of a Nubian or Kordofan Giraffe of the same approxi- 

 mate age. As regards the hind cannon-bone, this element in 

 Captain Gosling's specimen is pi-actically the same length as in 

 the type female skeleton ; and both these bones are scarcely 

 longer than the corresponding bone in the mounted skeleton of a 

 male Nubian Giraffe from Abyssinia in the British Museum. All 

 that the Nigeria.n specimens seem to show in this respect is that 

 the skull and the cannon-bone have the same respective lengths 

 in both sexes. Whether this holds good for other races of the 

 species, I have no means of determining. 



* For explanation of the Plates, see p. 121. 



t Proc. Zool. Soc. LondoH) 1904, i. p. 203 et seq. 



X Ibid. 1898, p. 40. 



