244 THE LIVING ANIMALS OF THE WORLD 
bigger of the two skulls belonged to a young male. This is the skin which is now set up 
in the Natural History Museum at South Kensington, and of which a photographic illustration 
accompanies this notice. Upon receiving this skin, I saw at once what the okapi was — namely, 
a close relation of the giraffe. From the very small development of the horn-bosses, I believed 
that it was nearer allied to the helladotherium than to the living giraffe. In forwarding 
the specimens to Professor Ray Lankester, I therefore proposed that it should be called 
Flelladotherium tigrinum. Professor Ray Lankester, having examined the specimens with a 
greater knowledge than I possessed, decided that the animal was rather more closely allied to 
the giraffe than to the helladotherium, but that it possessed sufficient peculiarities of its own 
to oblige him to create for its reception a new genus, which he proposed to call Ocapia. 
Meantime, the original strips of the skin (which apparently belonged to an older and 
larger animal than the 
specimen mounted at 
South Kensington) 
had been pronounced 
by experts to whom 
they were submitted 
to be the skin of an 
undiscovered species 
of horse, and _ this 
supposed new horse 
had been tentatively 
named by Dr. P. L. 
Sclater Eguus john- 
stout, The full dis- 
covery obliged 
kester to set aside 
any idea of the okapi 
horse, but he was 
Copyright photograph by Hutchinson & Co. 
good enough toattach 
HEAD OF OKAPI Mr. Sclater’s specific 
The enormous size of the ears is very noteworthy name of Johnstoni to 
his newly founded 
genus of Ocafpia. 
Up to the time of writing this is all that is known of this extraordinary survival in the 
Congo Forest of the only living relation of the giraffe. We know by palzontological discoveries 
in Europe and in Asia that there existed a large family of ruminants which in their develop- 
ment and features were neither of the Ox group nor of the Deer, but in some respects 
occupied a position midway between these two branches of cloven-hoofed, horned, ruminating 
Ungulates. To this family the Giraffe, the Okapi, the Helladotherium, the Samotherium, the 
Sivatherium, and the Bramatherium belong. In all probability bony projections arose from the 
skulls of these creatures similar in some measure to the prominent bony cores of the horns of 
oxen. From the top, however, of these bony cores there would seem to have arisen anciently 
antlers, possibly deciduous like those of the prongbuck. In time creatures like the giraffe 
lost any need for such weapons of offence, and ceased to grow antlers; but the bony cores 
from which these antlers once proceeded still remained, and in the case of the giraffe remain 
to the present day. In the helladotherium and in the okapi these bony cores have dwindled 
to mere bumps. 
Professor Ray Lan--. 
being allied to the. 
* 
