Is the Giraffe 'provided with more than Two Horns ? 13 



as I am aware, no anatomist found occasion to doubt its correct- 

 ness before Professor Owen, who, from the examination of 

 crania preserved in the Museum of the Royal College of Sur- 

 geons, Lincoln's Inn, was led to believe RiippelFs views to be 

 erroneous. In his otherwise valuable memoir, modestly entitled 

 " Notes on the Anatomy of the Nubian Giraffe," published in 

 the second volume of the Zoological Society's Transactions, at 

 page 217, he says: " In regard to the existence of horns in 

 the two sexes, we find a few examples among both deer and 

 antelopes, which thus resemble the giraffe. The horns of 

 the giraffe possess, however, certain characters which are pecu- 

 liar to themselves ; the basis of the horn, for example, is arti- 

 culated by synchondrosis to the frontal and parietal bones, and 

 thus constitutes an epiphysis rather than an apophysis of the 

 cranium. A broad, obtuse, osseous eminence in the middle of 

 the forehead has been described as a third horn, and has been 

 stated to be similarly articulated to the frontal bone, at least in 

 the male Nubian giraffe, and to be the only instance of a horn 

 developed in the mesial line of the cranium, and over a cranial 

 suture in the mammiferous class/'' Ouvier says : ff Au milieu 

 du chanfrein est un tubercle ou une troisieme come plus large 

 et beaucoup plus courte, mais egalement articulee par suture." 

 J. B. Fischer describes the third articulated horn as peculiar to 

 the male giraffe. To this sentence Professor Owen also appends 

 a foot-note, wherein he observes : " The figure of the skull 

 which illustrates the account of the Nubian giraffe in the Atlas 

 zu Rilpjpell's Reise im Nordlichen Afrika, pi. ix. p. 23, repre- 

 sents indeed this third tubercle as distinct and articulated by 

 suture with the cranium ; but in the original cranium, from 

 which the original figure is taken, and which I have examined 

 in the Frankfort Museum, I could not perceive any evidence of 

 the existence of such a suture ; the mesial protuberance had 

 not been detached from an epiphysial articular surface, but had 

 been sawn off in order to be preserved in the stuffed animal." 

 Further on, at p. 235, whilst instituting a comparison between 

 the Cape and Nubian varieties of the giraffe, Professor Owen 

 adds : " In the adult male Cape giraffe, the only appearance of 

 the distinctness of the anterior protuberance is due to some 

 irregular vascular grooves at the circumference of its base; but 

 similar grooves are also visible in the skull of the female ; and 

 a section of the skull, taken through the middle of the frontal 

 protuberance in the male, shows that it is formed by the thick- 

 ening and elevation of the anterior extremities of the frontal, 

 and the contiguous extremities of the nasal bones. In the male 

 Nubian giraffes, which had attained nearly two-thirds of their 

 full stature, the posterior horns, like other bony epiphyses, were 

 less firmly attached to the skull than they were in the full 



