THE LIFE OF MAMMALS 
make any play with weapons of that sort if he had them; he 
would be more likely to break his own neck than harm his 
antagonist. But antlers on the giraffes would be fine things 
for the perching birds! The present ‘“‘horns”’ consist of a pair 
six inches or so high between the ears; and in addition to them, 
in old male giraffes, there rises from the forehead a third 
horn, which is hardly more than a 
rounded boss in the southern species, 
but in the northern one may be a 
distinct horn three to five inches 
high. A third variety, discovered 
lately by Sir Harry Johnston, at 
Mt. Elgon, in Uganda (see Proc. 
Zoél. Soc., London, 1901, p. 476), 
has two small additional horns 
behind the principal pair. The two 
hinder knobs are real outgrowths 
of the skull, but the others originate as separate bony pieces 
which, after growing for a time as distinct bones, join tightly 
to the skull. 
The northern species is the one with which the world is most 
familiar by sight, as captives have almost invariably been 
brought from the Upper Nile region, where the animal still 
roves in small bands, and the young are occasionally captured. 
The giraffes about which hunters have mostly written, on the 
other hand, are those of South Africa, originally scattered every- 
where outside the dense forests, but now restricted to the 
Kalahari deserts and the remote interior, whither they are 
constantly pursued by hide hunters, and within a few years, 
probably, will become extinct. Their habits everywhere are 
very simple. They feed morning and evening, rest in the heat 
of the day, and at night visit the drinking placc. It is at this 
hour that they are most exposed to attack from their worst 
enemy —lions; but these stalk and seize them in daylight, too. 
294 
FIVE-HORNED GIRAFFE, 
