DE. E. EAT LANKESTER ON OKAPIA. 283 



certainly many thousand individuals of it inhabiting the forest of this region. The 

 equatorial position of the forest renders the atmosphere extremely liot and damp, 

 whilst overhead the foliage is so dense that little or no light penetrates to the ground. 

 There is ample room for locomotion among the trunks of the large trees, and it is 

 here that the Okapi roams. The Okapi is strictly a forest animal, feeding at the 

 occasional openings in the forest where decay and storms have broken down the 

 continuity of dark leailess avenues. The natives are extremely reluctant to penetrate 

 far into the forest, and hence it is that the Okapi is but seldom seen and is known 

 chiefly to the Wambutti or Akka, the dwarf race who, like the Okapi itself, seek the 

 recesses of the forest as a protection against light-loviug enemies ^. 



The peculiar disposition of the striping of the Okapi's legs and body must be 

 explained, if explained at all, by a consideration of its habits and surroundings ; and 

 at present we know no more on those matters than can be derived from the description 

 given by travellers of the heat, moisture, gloom, and silence, as well as the enormous 

 extent, of the Semliki and Congo forests. 



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



As the form and characters of the skull are those which are important in determining 

 the affinities of the Okapi and in characterizing the genus Okapia, I shall describe 

 these before proceeding to a consideration of the skin, the features of which may, in 

 many respects, be only of specific value. One of the two skulls sent is considerably 

 larger than the other, and belongs to the skin, the lower jaw having been still attached 

 to the latter when received by Sir Harry Johnston. 



The skulls are figured in Plates XXXI. and XXXIL, two-thirds of the natural 

 size. 



The state of the dentition of the larger skull indicates that it is that of an animal 

 far from mature and corresponds to that of a Giraffe of two-thirds the linear 

 measurements of an adult. This fact has an important bearing upon the conclusions 

 we may form as to the absence of horns, especially when taken into consideration 

 with the fact that there was no evidence in the skin as sent home as to the presence 

 of male or female generative organs. The skull and skin may be those of an 

 immature male or of an immature female. In Giraffes, however, of much less than 

 two-thirds growth the lateral horn-bones (" ossicusps "} are present as separately 

 ossifying cones. And it seems probable from the fact that none of the native reports 

 concerning the Okapi refer (according to Sir Harry Johnston) to the existence of 



' The Okapi is not unfrequently captured in dug-out traps and speared by the natives in the neighbourhood of 

 the Independent Congo State fort whence Sir Harry Johnston obtained it. It is not an animal which can attract 

 the sportsman, on account of the heat and darkness of the forest where it lives ; but I have no doubt that 

 anyone who would go and stay six months or more on this spot would be able to obtain several complete 

 specimens without firing a shot. 



