OCR Text |
Show 1897.] EXISTING FORMS OF GIRAFFE. 279 Therefore it will be seen that with the material I have been able to collect, some dozen skins1 and 13 skulls of both species of all ages, I cannot give more than a general outline of colouring. The adult Southern Giraffe has the general effect of a dirty white animal covered with brown blotches, with wider light spaces between them, the lower legs mottled, and upper face grizzled. The adult Northern Giraffe has clearly defined polygonal patches, the light intervening spaces narrower, the lower legs white and upper face roan. The figures of the heads (pp. 280, 281) are faithfully drawn from specimens presented to and now in the British Museum-that of the Three-horned Giraffe from a young bull obtained by Mr. Arthur Neumann a little to the east of the Loroghi Mountains, and that of the Two-horned Giraffe from an animal of about the same age obtained by Mr. H . A. Bryden in the North Kalahari district. It will be seen that the horns of the northern species are longer, more massive, and slope backwards more than those of the southern species. I have never seen the two horns of equal length in either species. I need hardly mention the fact that both species of Giraffe have six molariform teeth in each jaw, in common with all the Pecora (excepting the Spring Buck, Gazella euchore) of South Africa. Dr. Matschie in his recent work on German E. Africa says that there are only five molars in each jaw. This might lead to the idea that the German E. African Giraffe was of a different species, whereas I have shown that it is 67. capensis, as Dr. Matschie, indeed, has quite clearly stated is his opinion also ; but I think it well to mention this obvious misprint in the only book on the Mammalian fauna of East Africa yet published. The skull of the male 67. camelopardalls can of course be at once distinguished by the prominent third horn, and the skull of tbe female of the same species has no unossified space on the side of the face in front of the orbit, whde there is a vacant space of considerable extent in the skull of the female of 6V. capensis; there is no vacant space in the skulls of old males of either species, and, so far as I can discover, no " outer protrusion of the superior spongy bone," as Owen says, but the true outer bones of the face meet and are joined by sutures. The palate of the southern species ends posteriorly in a projecting point in the middle line, while that of the northern form is rather narrower and rounded; the space between the pterygoid and the back of the upper jaw or last molar is also wider in the southern form, and the skull generally rather broader in proportion to its length ; the distance from the back of the palate to the foramen magnum is slightly greater and the base of the brain-case is not so much bent down : thus in the northern form the angle formed by the basifacial and basicranial portions of the skull is more acute; this character is more marked in comparing skulls of moderately young animals. 1 Since writing the above Messrs. Kowland Ward & Co. have shown m e about a dozen scalps and neck-skins of the southern form, and they all show the same characters, though the light intervening spaces vary in width. |