A Giraffes Caresses . 
131 
shoulder-blades are greatly elongated. The slope of the 
back thus caused gives the appearance of inequality. 
John Leo, an African explorer of the same period, 
says:— 
“ The giraffa are so savage and wild, that it is very rare matter to 
see any of them: for they hide themselves among the desarts and 
woods, where no other beasts use to come; and so soone as one 
of them espieth a man, it flieth forthwith, though not very swiftly. 
It is headed like a camell, and eared like an oxe: neither are any 
taken by hunters, but while they are very young.” ( Purchas , vol. ii. 
p. 842.) 
Fynes Moryson, in his Itinerary , 1597 (p. 263), also 
describes the giraffe :— 
“ Here [Constantinople] be the mines of a pallace upon the very 
wals of the city, called the pallace of Constantine, wherein I did see 
an elephant, called philo by the Turkes, and another beast newly 
brought out of Affricke (the mother of monsters), which beast is 
altogether unknowne in our parts, and is called surnapa by the people 
of Asia, astanapa by others, and giraffa by the Italians, the picture 
whereof I remember to have seene in the mappes of Mercator; and 
because the beast is very rare, I will describe his forme as well as I 
can. His haire is red coloured, with many blacke and white spots; 
I could scarce reach with the points of my fingers to the hinder part 
of his backe, which grew higher and higher towards his foreshoulder, 
and his necke was thinne and some three els long. So as hee easily 
turned his head in a moment to any part or corner of the roome 
wherein he stood, putting it over the beams thereof, being built like a 
barne, and high for the Turkish building, not unlike the building of 
Italy, both which I have formerly described, by reason whereof he 
many times put his nose in my necke, when I thought myselfe 
furthest distant from him, which familiarity of his I liked not; and 
howsoever the keepers assured me he would not hurt me, yet I avoided 
these his familiar kisses as much as I could. His body was slender, 
not greater, but much higher then the body of a stagge or hart, and his 
head and face was like to that of a stagge, but the head was lesse and 
the face more beautifull: he had two homes, but short and scarce halfe 
a foote long; and in the forehead he had two bunches of flesh, his 
ears and feete like an oxe, and his legges like a stagge.” 
There is some difficulty in identifying the different 
