and Giraffe from North of India, 581 



Since the bone therefore does not belong to a camel, it is the 

 bone of a giraffe ? There is preserved in the museum of the Zoologi- 

 cal Society the skeleton of a young Nubian giraffe which died at the 

 Society's gardens. When its third cervical vertebra is placed in ap- 

 position with the fossil, the two are found to agree in every general 

 character, though they disagree in some of their proportions, and in 

 certain minor peculiarities. In this young and immature giraffe the 

 length of the third cervical vertebra is 1\ inches ; what, then, is the 

 length of this bone in the adult Nubian giraffe ? The authors, from 

 their not having had under their examination this vertebra of an 

 adult animal, have been unable to ascertain this point directly ; but 

 they are able to infer it, from the length of a detached bone preserved 

 in the museum of the Royal College of Surgeons of London, which 

 is the second cervical vertebra of a giraffe, nearly, but not quite full- 

 grown*. The length of this bone is \\\ inches. Now in the ske- 

 leton of the young giraffe belonging to the Zoological Society the 

 2d and 3rd cervical vertebrae are exactly of the same length. The 

 authors infer, therefore, that in an animal nearly full-grown, such as 

 was that to which the detached bone at the College of Surgeons 

 belonged, the length of the 3rd cervical vertebra is 1 1^ inches ; and 

 consequently, that the length of the same bone in an animal which 

 has reached full maturity, is about 12 inchest- 



That the fossil vertebra belonged to an adult which had long 

 attained its full size, is shown by the complete synostosis of the 

 upper and lower articulating surfaces, by the strong relief of the 

 ridges and the depth of the muscular depressions. But the length 

 of this bone is only a little more than eight inches. As the other 

 dimensions of the fossil and recent vertebrae that the authors placed 

 in apposition, are nearly in proportion to their respective lengths, 

 it follows that this fossil species of giraffe was one-third shorter in 

 the neck than an adult of the existing Nubian variety. 



But it was not only in size that the two giraffes differed ; they 

 differed also in their proportions. In the young giraffe at the Zoo- 



* This appears from the detached state of the upper and lower articulating 

 heads of the bone. 



t The height of the skeleton of the young giraffe in the museum of the Zoological 

 Society is 10£feet; that of a full-grown Nubian giraffe is 16 feet. 



4 F 



