326 DESCRIPTION OF THE MUSEUM. 



After having gone through the gallery where 

 the birds are placed, we enter the room which 

 contains the order ruminantia. We first see the 

 animals which, like those in the first room, being 

 too large to be placed in the cases, stand in the 

 middle of the room : they are, the giraffe (came- 

 lopardalis) , which lives in the deserts in the 

 south of Africa ; and is the tallest of them all, 

 its head being 18 feet from the ground; we 

 have had the male ever since the journey of 

 M. Levaillant, and the female has been recently 

 brought by M. Delalande : the buffalo (bos bu- 

 balus), originally from India, whence it was 

 taken to Egypt, and thence into Greece and 

 Italy, during the middle ages : the aurochs (bos 

 urus), from the marshy forests of Lithuania and 

 Caucasus, which has been erroneously considered 

 as the primitive stock of our large cattle (i): 

 the camel with two humps (camelus bactrianus), 

 from the centre of Asia, and the camel with one 

 hump (camelus dvomedarius) ; two species which 

 are completely domesticated, and are the only 

 medium of communication between certain na- 

 tions separated by deserts : and the elk (cervus 

 alces) which is found in the marshy forests to the 



(1) By the side of the aurochs is a cow without horns, and a bull of 

 a race which is half wild in the plains of Camargue, in Provence. 

 This last was given to the Museum by baron Laugier. 



