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face are puce, or fawn, the forehead and ears are reddish, and the muzzle 

 is blackish ; while the lower part of the buttocks and the limbs as far 

 down as the knees and hocks are transversely banded with black and 

 white, the white bands being for the most part much narrower than the 

 black. Below the knees and hocks the limbs are white, save for a black 

 band round each fetlock and a black stripe down the front of the fore-legs. 



Although the okapi (or o'api, as it is called by some of them) has 

 doubtless been familiar for centuries to the tribes of the Congo Forest, 

 nothing, save some vague rumours as to the existence there of a mule-like 

 animal, was known of it in Europe till 1900. In that year, however, 

 Sir Harry Johnston despatched to England certain strips of skin (now ascer- 

 tained to have been cut from the hind-quarters) of an unknown animal. 

 These, however, were quite insufficient to give any real clue as to the 

 nature of the creature from which they were taken. In the following 

 year the same gentleman sent home an entire skin and two skulls — both 

 belonging to immature animals — obtained in the Semliki Forest between 

 Lake Albert and Lake Albert Edward, on the border between the Congo 

 Free State and the Uganda Protectorate. These sufficed to indicate to 

 Sir Harry the affinities of the animal from which they were derived ; and 

 the existence in Central Africa of a type of ruminant supposed to be entirely 

 extinct was thus fully demonstrated. The discovery was as important as it 

 was unexpected ; and the giraffe now occupies a much less isolated position 

 in the animal kingdom of to-day than was previously supposed. 



The skin, which was mounted at the establishment of the publisher, 

 and from which the accompanying illustration is taken, is now exhibited 

 in the Natural History Branch of the British Museum in the same case 

 with specimens of the heads and skulls of giraffes. 



No European appears hitherto to have seen a living okapi, and such 

 accounts of its habits as we possess at present are derived from native 

 sources. According to the information elicited from the forest dwarfs by 



