PROCEEDINGS OF SOCIETIES. 
317 
paper on the powers which move the blood in the veins. The subject was of too 
professional a nature to justify more than a brief notice in this place. It may be 
stated, however, that the main drift of the reader, in his examination of a great 
number of theories, was to prove, contrary to the opinion of several eminent 
physiologists, Dr. Arnott in particular, that the motion of the blood through the 
veins is not due to the impulse of the heart, which impels sanguineous fluid 
through the arteries, but rather to the contractibility of the capillaries—that 
immense system of minute vessels, which lie between the aorta, by which the 
arterial blood goes from the heart, and the vena cava, by which it is returned from 
the veins. A highly interesting conversation followed the reading of Dr. Hol¬ 
land’s paper.— Sheffield Iris , April 10, 1838. 
OXFORD ASHMOLEAN SOCIETY. 
March 26.—Dr. Buckland in the chair.—Mr. Holme, of C.C.C., read a paper 
on the early accounts of the Natural History of the Giraffe. A representation of 
this animal occurs amongst the monuments of Thebes, where the chiefs of four 
nations bring tributes to the Egyptian king, Thothmes III., who is supposed to 
be the Pharaoh in whose reign the Israelites quitted Egypt. It seems doubtful, 
however, whether the animal was known to the Israelites. It was certainly 
unknown to Aristotle. Timjeus (b.c. 260), the historian of Sicily, as quoted 
by Kazarine, the Arabian, was evidently acquainted with it. Agatharidos 
(b.c. 180) mentions its name as originating from its combining the spots of the 
Panther with the size of the Camel, and states that its neck was sufficiently long 
to enable it to feed upon trees. From this time till the reign of Julius Caesar 
no mention of this animal occurs. Pliny says that the earliest specimens seen 
in Europe were exhibited by that emperor; from which fact it may be inferred 
that the animal was not at that time found in the regions of Africa north of the 
Zahara. Henceforward, the Giraffe was not unfrequently exhibited in Rome* 
Strabo gives a detailed account of it, which is the more valuable, as from his 
extensive travels in Upper Egypt it is probable that he had seen the animal in 
its native state. Horace and Pausanias allude to it. Pliny’s account is 
remarkably meagre. The name of Nabis , by which he says it was known 
amongst the ^Ethiopians, corresponds exactly with the Hottentot term Naip. 
It is curious that he should have taken no notice of its horns. Oppian, who had 
probably seen some of the specimens brought over by the Gordians in the third 
century, gives an accurate description of it in the third book of his Cynegetica. 
After the removal of the seat of empire to Constantinople, the Giraffe was but 
rarely seen in Europe. After Heliodorus, no author, for several centuries, 
notices it, as the Arabian conquest of Egypt had probably cut off all com- 
2 u 
vol. hi.-—no. xxi. 
