550 THE ZOOLOGIST. 



an extraordinary degree, and their confidence in their own in- 

 visibility is unlimited. A practical illustration of this occurred 

 to me one evening when I had sat in one place for twenty minutes 

 carefully spying the surrounding country. My coign of vantage 

 was a knoll which commanded a small shallow hollow, in which 

 there was not a vestige of cover, except the few thin thuja bushes 

 which looked as if they could not hide a Eat. It was not till I rose 

 to shift my position that a female Aroui and two yearlings started 

 from these bushes. They had been lying within sixty yards of 

 me, and must have been fully conscious of my presence." * Le 

 Vaillant writes : " If the Giraffe stands still, and you view it in 

 front, the effect is very different. As the fore part of its body is 

 much larger than the hind part, it completely conceals the latter ; 

 so that the animal resembles the standing trunk of a dead tree."t 

 Mr. Baines, the African traveller, related to Frank Buckland 

 that " the Giraffe seems to know that if he keeps perfectly quiet 

 he will be mistaken for a tree ; if he moves, his presence will 

 become apparent to his enemy — man." \ Baines himself has 

 recorded that a Giraffe he watched passing through the bush 

 looked " for all the world, as he stopped to gaze, like the white 

 stump of a dead tree, which anyone might have passed by without 

 suspecting it of the power of motion." § Sir Samuel Baker bears 

 the same witness : " It may be readily imagined that, owing to 

 the great height of this animal, it can be distinguished from a 

 distance, and does not require an elaborate search ; nevertheless, 

 it is exceedingly deceptive in appearance when found among its 

 native forests. The red-barked mimosa, which is its favourite 

 food, seldom grows higher than fourteen or fifteen feet. Many 

 woods are almost entirely composed of these trees, upon the flat 

 heads of which the Giraffe can feed when looking downwards. 

 I have frequently been mistaken when remarking some particular 

 dead tree-stem at a distance, that appeared like a decayed relic 

 of the forest, until, upon nearer approach, I have been struck by 

 the peculiar inclination of the trunk : suddenly it has started 

 into movement and disappeared." || Gordon Cumming narrates 



* ' Short Stalks,' 2nd edit. (1893), p. 136. 



f ' New Travels into Int. Parts of Africa,' Eng. transl. vol. ii. pp. 278-9. 



I ' Curiosities of Natural History,' pop. edit. 3rd ser. p. 232. 



§ ' Explorations in S. W. Africa,' p. 387. 



|| ' Wild Beasts and their Ways,' vol. ii. p. 151. 



