THE LIFE OF MAMMALS 
the closing years of the last century Sir Harry Johnston found 
the negroes of the Semliki Valley, on the Uganda border of the 
Congo Free State, using for belts and other equipments the 
skin of an animal which he saw was unknown to science; but 
he was then unable to penetrate the forests where, the Pygmies 
told him, the animal lived. Later the Belgian officers of that 
district secured for him a skin and skull which after a time 
reached London and were set up in the British Museum. Sir 
Harry learned that its native name on the Semliki was okapi or 
“‘o’api,” as the Pygmies pronounced it; and Professor E. Ray 
Lankester named for it a new giraffine genus, and 
called this animal Ocapia johnstoni. A popular ac- 
count of it was presently prepared by Sir Harry Johnston (with 
a colored drawing which, by permission, has served as the ma- 
terial for our plate) for McClure’s Magazine (New York, Sep- 
tember, 1901); and Beddard included a description in his 
‘““Mammalia” *’ as follows: — 
Okapi. 
“The animal is of about the sizeof a sable antelope and the back and 
sides are of a rich brown color; it is only the fore and hind limbs which 
are striped, the striping being longitudinal, i.e. parallel with the long axis 
of the body. The head is giraffelike, but there are no external horns; 
wisps of curled hairs seem to represent the vestiges of the horns of other 
giraffes. The tail is rather short, and the neck is rather thick and short. 
The skull is clearly giraffine. The basicranial axis is straight, and the 
fontanelle in the lachrymal region is very large.” 
More lately the examination of additional specimens enables Professor 
Lankester to decide that the first one received and above described (whence 
the drawing was made) was an immature female; and it is now known 
that the male has a pair of short, backward-sloping, giraffelike horns. 
In the details of its skull the okapi is extremely close to the extinct Samo- 
therium. “‘It is probable,” he asserts,!” “that there are two species, a 
smaller and a larger, living both in the forests of the Congo.” 
As to its range and habits, Sir Harry learned that it was found 
on both sides of the Uganda border, in the heart of the densest 
forest, where it moved about in pairs and was said to feed wholly 
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