130 The Animal-Lore of Shakspeare’s Time. 
tusks, three inches in length; two in the upper jaw pointing down¬ 
wards, and two in the lower jaw pointing upwards ; small in proportion 
to their length, and white as ivory. Upon the whole it is a handsome 
creature.” ( Travels , p. 252, ed. Marsden, 1818.) 
This account is incorrect, in so far as the long canine 
teeth of the musk deer exist only in the upper jaw of the 
animal. The scent of the musk was greatly in favour 
with our ancestors. Mistress Quickly represents the wooers 
of Mistress Ford as sending “ coach after coach, letter 
after letter, gift after gift; smelling so sweetly, all musk ” 
(Merry Wives , ii. 2, 66). 
Amongst all the wonders of animal life met with by 
^ ^ medieval travellers none could have excited 
more their wonder and admiration than that 
beautiful inhabitant of tropical Africa, the Giraffe. Pro¬ 
bably the earliest, and certainly the quaintest, notice of 
this animal by an English writer occurs in Sir John 
Mandeville’s Travels , written about the year 1356. In 
Chinese Tartary he meets with— 
“many bestes, that ben clept orafles. In Araby6, their ben clept 
gerfauntz; that is a best pomelee or spotted ; that is but a litvlle more 
highe, then is a stede : but he hathe the necke a 20 cubytes long: and 
his croup and his tayl is as of an hert: and he may token over a gret 
highe hous.” (Page 289, ed. Halliwell, 1839.) 
John Sanderson, a London merchant who visited Con¬ 
stantinople about the year 1600, relates his impressions 
at the first sight of the giraffe:— 
“The admirablest and fairest beast that ever I saw was a jarraff, 
as tame as a domesticall deere, and of a reddish deere colour, white 
brested and cloven footed: he was of a very great height, his fore-legs 
longer then the hinder, a very long necke, and headed like a camell, 
except two stumps of home on his head. This fairest animall was sent 
out of Ethiopia, to this great Turkes father for a present; two Turkes 
the keepers of him, would make him kneele, but not before any 
Christian for any money.” ( Purchas , vol. ii. p. 1619.) 
The giraffe’s legs are in reality of equal length, but the 
