246 DR. p. CHALMERS MITCHELL ON [Apr. 18, 



nearly pure white, and the lower parts of the legs, as in the 

 northern forms generally, are white, showing only the faintest 

 trace of spots. The middle line of the face and forehead, as in 

 the bull, has a pale fawn band, narrower and paler than the 

 corresponding region in the Nubian Giraffe. Between the nostrils 

 in the bull and the young female is a dark spot, not recorded 

 by Mr. Lydekker, and absent in the specimen of Nubian type 

 at the Natural History Museum. The dark marks inside the pale 

 ears are arranged in most Giraffes in three distinct pencillings. 

 Although I have not seen this pattern called attention to, and 

 although it is slurred over in most of the published figures, it is 

 present in all the Giraffes that I have seen, except in the head of 

 the Nubian Gii'affe mounted in the Biitish Museum (Natural 

 History). In that sj^ecimen there are only two pencillings, and 

 in the young female which is the subject of this note the arrange- 

 ment is not so clearly divided into three (text-fig. 51, A) as in 

 most Giraffes, although it does not resemble the Nubian form in 

 this respect. It would be interesting to have more information 

 on this point, not only with regard to other examples of the 

 Nubian and Nigerian Giraffes, but in the cases of many other 

 animals. In quite a large number of Anteloj^es, for instance, 

 there is a trifid dark pattern inside the ear, but I do not know of 

 any observations on this subject. Two rather regular rows of 

 pale spots lie along the face under the eye and ear, the arrange- 

 ment of these being similar in the bull and young female, and 

 different fi'om the irregular spots in the corresponding region of 

 the Nubian form. 



The blotches on the front of the neck of the young female differ 

 considerably from those in the case of the bull. They ai'e much 

 more numerous and more regularly quadrangulai-, and instead of 

 fading off into the ground-colour, they are shai'ply marked off 

 from it. It is possible that in the course of growth they might 

 come to assume the elongated shape and indefinite margins 

 characteristic of the neck-blotches of the bull, but in their 

 present form they differ considerably and yet do not approach 

 more closely to the condition in the Nubian form, 



Mr Lydekker has pointed out that the occipital region, the 

 back of the head from the root of the horns to down belowthe ears, is 

 marked with small spots in all Giraffes, except the Nubian, wliei-e 

 this region is very white, and in the Nigerian, where it is white 

 with a few fawn spots between the ears and the horns and large 

 fawn blotches below the ears. The young female Giraffe resembles 

 the Nigerian bull in this region (text-fig. 51, B). Judging from 

 these two examples, it would seem as if a special character of the 

 Nigerian Giraffe is that the characteiistic large blotches of 

 the neck are carried higher upon the back of the head, to a 

 region which is mai-ked by veiy small spots in most Gii-aftes, but 

 which in the Nubian form is white with only a very few pale 

 spots between the ears and the horns. 



