562 WILD SCENES AND WILD HUNTERS. 
chestnut-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 koth 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 antenne 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 teaf-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 
