20 



The Museum Gazette 



THE GIRAFFE FAMILY. 



The Camelopard or Giraffe (Camelopardalis giraffa). — We have 

 in the African Giraffe the last representative of a group of 

 specially adapted animals, which were more numerous in 

 bygone times. Fossil remains of their ancestors are found 

 over Greece, Persia, India and China, and with them those of 

 other closely related animals now wholly extinct. Some of the 

 latter, Vishnutherium, Helladotherium and Sivatherium, were much 

 larger than the present giraffe ; the latter being indeed of 

 gigantic stature. These animals exhibit relationships on the 

 one side with cattle (Bovidce), and on the other with deer 

 (Cervidce). In all, however, their organisation had received 

 modifications fitting them for one special mode of feeding, 

 and they might be named tree-browsers. Their forequarters 

 had overgrown the hinder ones, the neck had been greatly 

 lengthened, and the eyes made prominent. They had learned 

 to depend for safety upon their advantages in reference to 

 field of observation and their powers of flight. Being unable 

 to use their horns with efficiency and ease at the end of so 

 long a neck, these appendages had ceased to be produced. 

 The now defenceless animals had become at once timorous 

 and exceedingly wary, but that these qualities did not suffice 

 them for protection is proved by the fact that most of the 

 species have succumbed to their enemies, and that unless 

 at the present day specially protected by man, the whole 

 family would soon be extinct. 



In essential features the giraffe resembles other ungulates. 

 It has two well-shaped hoofs, it has the bosses for a pair 

 of horns, and possesses incisor teeth in the lower jaw only. 

 Notwithstanding the great length of its neck there are in it 

 only the normal number of bones (vertebrae), that is, seven. 

 Its tail is long, with a terminal bush like that of a cow; but in 



