12 Is the Giraffe provided with more than Two Horns ? 



IS THE GIRAFFE PROVIDED WITH MORE THAN 

 TWO HORNS? 



BY T. SPENCER COBBOLD, M.D., F.L.S. 



Lecturer on Comparative Anatomy, Zoology, and Botany at the Middlesex 

 Hospital Medical College. 



In the first of a course of public lectures " On the Structure, 

 Habits, and Affinities of the Herbivorous Mammalia" which I 

 had the honour of delivering at the Royal Institution of Great 

 Britain, Albemarle Street, during the summer of 1860, I ven- 

 tured to answer the above proposed question affirmatively. I 

 say " ventured/'' because I was aware that in doing so I should 

 be recording an opinion directly at variance with the published 

 views of one to whose elaborate and long- continued researches 

 the progress of anatomical and zoological science is deeply 

 indebted. In the present case, however, we have to deal with 

 a simple matter of fact, and I therefore proceed in the following 

 pages to explain the grounds on which, in contradistinction to 

 the statements of Professor Owen, it may be truthfully affirmed 

 that there are three horns, or " pseudo-ceratophorous epiphyses," 

 projecting from the skull of the adult male giraffe. 



The veteran traveller, Dr. Edouard Riippell, who, according 

 to recent information, is still in the enjoyment of good health, 

 and living in the city of Frankfort, was the first to declare 

 unequivocally that a third horn existed in the full-grown male. 

 In his trustworthy and admirable Reise im Nordlichen Afrika, 

 published in the year 1828, he observes that " the horns con- 

 stitute the principal generic character, they being formed by 

 distinct bones united to the frontals and parietals by a very 

 obvious suture, and exhibiting throughout the same structure 

 as the other bones. In both sexes one of these abnormal bones 

 is situated on each branch of the coronal suture, and the male 

 possesses an additional one, placed more anteriorly, and occu- 

 pying the middle of the frontal suture." Not having the 

 original work by me at the present time, I quote the above 

 translation from an excellent article in the English Cyclopaedia, 

 where a rough woodcut is also given, copied from Riippell, 

 representing the third horn in profile. In the Atlas zu der 

 Reise, etc., the plates are beautifully executed, and from repeated 

 examinations and comparisons, I am convinced of their accuracy 

 in all respects. Though less developed and conspicuous, the 

 mesial prominence is precisely like the two posterior epiphysial 

 horns, and all of them are distinct from the true osseous ele- 

 ments of the cranium. 



This early statement of Riippell appears to have received 

 the unqualified support of Baron Georges Cuvier, and so far 



