16 Is the Giraffe provided with more than Two Horns? 



rudimentary existence of a third horn." This fine male for- 

 merly belonged to the London Zoological Society, and was 

 bred in the Society's Gardens, Regent's Park. I have noted 

 the peculiar cause of its death, in the paper already referred to, 

 in the Zoological Society's Proceedings for 1860. 



5. After completing the article above mentioned, I visited 

 the museum of the Royal College of Surgeons, Lincoln's Inn; and 

 having, through the ever-ready kindness of the late Professor 

 Quekett, had an opportunity of inspecting the giraffme crania 

 there preserved, I was in time to append a footnote to " Ruini- 

 nantia" to this effect : " The osseous nodules noticed in the 

 Dublin specimen not only exist in one of these crania, but they 

 could be partly raised from the subjacent bone by the easy 

 insertion of the finger-nail under the margin." Since the year 

 1856 I have repeatedly examined these crania, and have no 

 shadow of doubt as to the existence of an ossified synchon- 

 drosis which has united the third horn to the frontal eminence. 



6. The distinctness between the third horn and the frontal 

 eminence was still more significant in the skull of an adult 

 giraffe which died at the Zoological Society's Gardens several 

 years back ; but in this case also there was union by synchon- 

 drosial ossification. I examined the cranium in 1857, before 

 the skeleton was finally cleaned and sent away, and have since 

 been informed that it is preserved in a museum at Bristol. 



7. The most cogent evidence, however, which I can adduce, 

 is that derivable from the skull of a young male, whose cra- 

 nium is here represented in profile, and whose entire skeleton 

 may now be seen, set up and preserved, in the Derby Museum 

 at Liverpool. This skeleton was formerly in the possession 

 of Mr. Gerrard, the accomplished taxidermist at the British 

 Museum, and I am indebted to his son for the loan of a care- 

 fully-executed drawing which I have here sketched in a reduced 

 form, and caused to be* copied in a tinted plate. In this in- 

 stance, as I am distinctly and unequivocally informed by several 

 gentleman connected with the British Museum, who have 

 examined the skull, the third horn became readily detached by 

 maceration, it was for a considerable time separately preserved, 

 and presented all the ordinary characteristics of the two poste- 

 rior horns, of whose epiphysial character no one entertains the 

 slightest doubt. The third horn, or central pseudo-cerato- 

 phorous epiphysis, has since been glued on to its original posi- 

 tion, and may now be seen in situ, as a standing proof of the 

 correctness of Piippell's original persuasion. 



8. In the Museum of the University of Tubingen there is 

 also preserved a similar skeleton of a young male giraffe, in 

 which — according to verbal information kindly communicated 

 to me by Dr. Gunther, of the British Museum, who is familiar 



