ANOPLOTHERIUM AND GIRAFFE. Ifl9 



that this fossil species of giraffe was one-third shorter in the 

 neck than an adult of the existing Nubian variety. 



But it was not only in size that the two giraffes differed : 

 they differed also in their proportions. In the young giraffe 

 at the Zoological Society the vertebra, which is 7^ ijiches 

 long, has a vertical diameter of 3-8 inches; whereas in 

 the fossil species the vertebra, which is 8 inches long, in- 

 stead of having a vertical diameter exceeding 4 inches (as 

 it ought, if its breadth were proportional to its length), has 

 a vertical diameter of only 3-6 inches. This goes to prove 

 that in this fossil giraffe the neck was one-tenth _ more 

 slender in proportion to its length than the neck is in the 

 existing species. 



The inferior surface of the body of the vertebra is more 

 curved longitudinally in the fossil than it is in the recent 

 bone ; the height of the arc in the former case being to the 

 height in the latter as 3 is to 2. 



On the under surface of the fossil vertebra a very distinct 

 longitudinal ridge [b) runs down the middle, and this ridge 

 is wanting in the recent bone ; but this difference, probably, 

 is chiefly owing to difference of age. 



In the fossil vertebra the upper articulating head (c) is 

 very convex; for with a transverse diameter of 1'4 inch it 

 has a vertical height of 1 inch ; laterally it is a good deal 

 compressed. 



The posterior articulating surface {d) forms a perfectly cir- 

 cular cup, two inches in diameter ; and this diameter, in the 

 immature Nubian giraffe, is one-tenth greater, although 

 the vertebra is one-sixteenth shorter. This affords a further 

 proof of the comparative slenderness of neck in this fossil 

 species. (See Plate XVI. fig. 4.) 



In regard to the apophyses, the inferior transverse pro- 

 cesses {i, i) are sent off downwards and outwards from the 

 lower part of the anterior end, exactly as in the recent 

 species, and they are developed to nearly the same amount 

 of projection. There is, however, this considerable difference, 

 that whereas in the recent species they do not run half-way 

 down the body of the vertebra, in the fossil they are decur- 

 rent along the whole of its length in well-marked laminar 

 ridges, which are confluent with the nearly obsolete ridges 

 of the upper transverse processes, the united mass near the 

 posterior end being dilated into two thick alseform expan- 

 sions (e, e). 



In the fossil, as in the recent bone, the superior transverse 

 processes are seen only in a rudimentary state; in the 

 former, however, they run forwards across the body with 

 less obliquity, and consequently make the canals for the 



