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Show 1905.] OX TIIE NIGERIAN AND KILIMANJARO GIRAFFES. 119 1. On the Nigerian and Kilimanjaro Giraffes. By R. Lydekker. [Received January 7, 1905.] (Plates X I. & XII.*) Since the appearance in last year's ‘ Proceedings ' + of my paper on the subspecies of Giraffa Camelopardalis, the British (Natural History) Museum has received the skins and portions of the skeletons of two Giraffes belonging to forms hitherto insufficiently represented in the collection. The descriptions and figures of these two specimens will serve to complete the aforesaid paper, so far as anything connected with the zoology of mammals can be said to be complete. The first specimen comprises the skin, skull, and limb-bones of an adult bull of the Nigerian, or western, race of the Giraffe (Giraffa cameloparclalis peralta), shot by Captain G. B. Gosling in Nigeria, and presented by that gentleman to the Museum. The head and neck have been mounted, and form the subject of PI. X II. figs. 1 & 2. The second specimen is a female (apparently not full-grown) of the Kilimanjaro Giraffe (G. c. tippelskirchi), presented by Mr. T. F. Victor Buxton, by whom the animal was killed in British East Africa last year. Of the former race, the only example hitherto known is the type female, of which the skull and limb-bones were alone preserved ; while of the second no coloured figure has, so far as I am aware, been hitherto published. Captain Gosling's specimen, which is that of a fully adult, although not a very old, animal, serves to show that the Nigerian Giraffe belongs to the northern, or typical, group of the species- that is to say, the one in which the bulls have a large median horn, and the legs in both sexes are white, or nearly so. When describing the skeleton of the type female, Mr. Thomas i was of opinion that the lengths of the skull and of the hind cannon-bone indicated an unusually large form of Giraffe. This, however, is not borne out by the corresponding bones of the male. The skull of the latter is, for example, not very markedly larger than that of a Nubian or Kordofan Giraffe of the same approximate age. As regards the hind cannon-bone, this element in Captain Gosling's specimen is practically the same length as in the type female skeleton; and both these bones are scarcely longer than the corresponding bone in the mounted skeleton of a male Nubian Giraffe from Abyssinia in the British Museum. All that the Nigerian specimens seem to show in this respect is that the skull and the cannon-bone have the same respective lengths in both sexes. Whether this holds good for other races of the species, I have no means of determining. * For explanation of the Plates, sec p. 121. f Proc. Zool. Soc. London, 1904,. i. p. 202 et seq. I Ibid. 1898, p. 40. |
