562 WILD SCENES AND WILD HUNTERS. 



chestmit-colored old bull of the herd, whose exalted head 

 towers above his companions, generally attaining to a height 

 of upwards of eighteen feet. The females are of lower 

 stature and more delicately formed than the males, their 

 height averaging from sixteen to seventeen feet. 



Some writers have discovered ugliness and a want of 

 grace in the giraffe, but I consider that he is one of the 

 most strikingly beautiful animals in creation ; and when a 

 herd of them is seen scattered through a grove of the 

 picturesque parasol-topped acacias which adorn their native 

 plains, and on whose uppermost shoots they are enabled to 

 browse by the colossal height with which nature has so 

 admirably endowed them, he must indeed be slow of concep- 

 tion who fails to discover both grace and dignity in all their 

 movements. 



There can be no doubt that every animal is seen to the 

 greatest advantage in the haunts which nature destined him 

 to adorn; and among the various living creatures which 

 beautify this fair creation, I have often traced a remarkable 

 resemblance between the animal and the general appearance 

 of the locality in which it is found. This I remarked at 

 an early period of my life, when entomology occupied a 

 part of my attention. No person following this interesting 

 pursuit can fail to observe the extraordinary likeness which 

 insects bear to the various abodes in which they are met 

 with. Thus, among the long, green grass, we find a variety 

 of long, green insects, whose legs and antennae so resemble 

 the shoots emanating from the stalks of the grass that it 

 requires a practiced eye to distinguish them. Throughout 

 sandy districts, varieties of insects are met with of a color 

 similar to the sand which they inhabit. 



Among the green leaves of the various trees of the forest 

 innumerable leaf-colored insects are to found ; while, closely 

 adhering to the rough, gray bark of these forest-trees, we 

 observe beautifully-colored gray-looking moths of various 



