279 ] 



VII. On Okapia, a new Genus o/GirafRd8e,//'om Central Africa. By E. Rat Laneestee, 

 M.A., LL.D., F.E.S., F.Z.S., Director of the Natural History Departments of the 

 British Museum, Correspondent of the Institute of France. 



Received and read November 19, 1901. 



[Plates XXX.-XXXII.] 



Contents. Page 



I. History of the Discovery of the Okapi 279 



II. The Eegion inhabited by the Okapi 282 



III. Description of the Skull and Lower Jaw of the Okapi 283 



IV. The Areas of Tumescence of the Giraffine Skull and the Nature and Origin of the Horns of Pecora . 291 

 V. Characters presented by the Skin of the Okapi 300 



VI. Characters of the Genus OTcapia and of the Species 0. johnstoni 302 



VII. Appendix 304 



VIII. Explanation of the Plates 309 



I. — History of the Discovert of the Okapi. 



JLHE animal to which this memoir relates is, we are told by Sir Harry Johnston, 

 who obtained the skin and skulls here described and presented them to the British 

 Museum, known to the natives in the neighbourhood of the Semliki Forest by the 

 name " Okapi." 



The following passage in Sir Henry Stanley's ' In Darkest Africa,' vol. ii. p. 442, 

 first drew Sir Harry Johnston's attention to the animal. Stanley says, in reporting on 

 the language of the Congo dwarfs whom he saw in 1888 : — " The Wambutti (these 

 dwarfs) knew a donkey and called it ' Atti.' They say that they sometimes catch them 

 in pits. What they can find to eat is a wonder. They eat leaves." From conversation 

 with Sir Henry Stanley during the present year (1901), Sir Harry Johnston has come 

 to the conclusion that Stanley and his companions occasionally caught sight of the 

 Okapi when they traversed the region of the Congo forest on the western side of the 

 Semliki River. His own acquaintance with the animal, which he was led to seek by 

 Stanley's brief reference to it as a donkey, is given in the following extracts from a 

 letter to me dated November 1901. The word "Atti" given by Stanley is apparently 

 a variant of the name " Okapi," which Sir Harry Johnston found to be the name for 

 it used by his informants : — 



" Somewhere about March 1900 I first heard of the Okapi from the Congo dwarfs 

 who were staying with me at Entebbe, Uganda. At the beginning of July I reached 

 the Semliki Forest, in the Congo Free State. The first Belgian official who confirmed the 

 Okapi stories, and who assisted me to get the bandoliers of skin, was a Lieutenant Meura. 



VOL. XVI. — part VI. No. 1. — August, 1902. . 2 s 



