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BRITISH CENTRAL AFRICA 
young wart hogs, which are born without these white markings. The wart hog 
is chiefly distinguished from the true pigs by the reduction in number of its 
upper incisor teeth. In young animals one pair of perfectly useless incisor teeth 
-—-the outermost pair—is retained, but these fall out in the old males. In old 
animals it sometimes happens that there are few teeth left in the head except 
the molars and the canine tusks. There are also peculiarities in the number 
and shape of the molar teeth which separate these animals from the typical 
pigs. In the male there is very little hair on the body except along the line of 
the back where a thin mane of very long coarse bristles extends from the top 
of the head to the tail. This mane is not erect but falls over on either side. 
Around the chest there is also a frill of whitish bristles. The rest of the body 
is nearly bare but is sprinkled with a bristly growth. My illustration, which 
was drawn from life, will give some idea of this extraordinary creature. I kept 
a wart hog for over a year at Zomba as a pet. He was brought down from the 
Lake Mweru district by Mr. Crawshay and is now in the Zoological Gardens. 
The animal derives its name from the huge excrescences or warts on the face, 
four in number—the large ones seemingly serving as defences to the eyes and 
two small ones on either side of the nasal bones not sufficiently developed as 
yet to be of any particular use. 
The wart hog prefers a dry country and likes a loose sandy soil in which 
it burrows, or at least is thought to burrow. In the opinion of some observers 
it does not make these holes itself but occupies the lair of some other animal, 
or a natural crevice in any mound. The natives state that the female wart hog 
seldom has more than two young ones at a time. Certainly the number of teats 
is much reduced, being only four, which are inguinal in position. The female is 
a good deal smaller than the male and has not quite such a preposterous 
development of head, nor are her tusks nearly as large. 
As it exists, the mature male wart hog looks like a beast of another epoch. 
I doubt if there is any other mammal whose head is so disproportionately large. 
The existence of the giraffe in British Central Africa is still a moot question. 
The natives report its presence in the Luangwa Valley with very circumstantial 
details and they are probably telling the truth ; but up to the present time no 
European has sighted the animal in that country, nor have any tangible proofs, 
such as skulls, or tails, or skins, been sent back as evidence of its existence. 1 
We have seen so few specimens of the giraffe living or dead in England, and 
those specimens commonly exhibited have not been very good ones that 
perhaps we do not realise the remarkable fact that one species or sub-species 
of the giraffe is really a three-horned animal. I saw recently at the British 
Museum a head from Somaliland in which the central horn between the eyes 
was nearly six inches in length. As a matter of fact the giraffe is an animal 
which has lost its horns and retained little more than the basal portion, the 
bony cores from which the horns (probably in the form of antlers) once 
grew. An analogy may be found in the prong buck of North America, an 
animal which appears to be very distantly related to the stock from which 
the giraffe sprang. Imagine the horn cores of the prong buck increased in 
growth till they resemble those of the muntjac deer and you have something 
answering the present condition of the giraffe’s so-called “horns.” 
1 It is a point so interesting as to be worth a special expedition on the part of some enterprising 
sportsman-naturalist, as it would be desirable to know whether it differed in any way from the giraffe of 
South Africa and is more akin to the giraffe of East Africa and the Northern Sudan. This subject has 
lately been discussed by Mr. W.. E. de Winton. 
