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Show 344 DR. C. I. FORSYTH MAJOR ON [Nov. 18, Lieutenant Leoni, who forwarded to Brussels the first specimens, also writes that the Okapi is called N 'dumbe by the Momvus, between the rivers Nepoko and Adjamu, and on the Rubi, and that he himself had met with two herds on the Nepoko. He mentions besides two other names of the Okapi: in the country of the Mokumus it is called M'Boote, and in the Kiu-vuailia country Kenghe. I have not been able to find these two districts marked on the maps. There are already quite as many native denominations known as there are binomial names for the Okapi, but it does not follow that each tribe enjoys the possession of a distinct form. To return for a moment to the question of different species : from what I have said, it may be seen that the new material rather confirms my view as to the specific distinctness of the Brussels specimens, although speaking generally I am a priori more in sympathy with uniting than with dividing species, and have come to consider new specific names as being in many cases an evil, although a necessary one. Personally I esteem it a more fascinating and a more important task to investigate the relations of the Okapi with the Giraffe on the one hand, and its fossil relatives on the other. This investigation culminates in the question, to which I have already endeavoured to give an answer \ whether the main characters in which the Okapi differs from the Giraffe are generalized characters, or whether it is the reduced, degenerate survivor of a series, " the most modern and most modest member of a tribe which has flourished in bygone times," as it has been put2. I hope to show that a similar inquiry is not " a fruitless amusement." The importance of the discovery of the Okapi from a scientific point of view consists, of course, in the quite unhoped-for addition of a second living genus to a family of Ruminants which was hitherto represented in the recent fauna by the isolated and aberrant type of the Giraffe alone. One important point upon 'which the Brussels material has thrown light is the mode of development of the horns. The horn-cones which had remained attached to the first skin received in Brussels having been macerated, it became clear that, as in the Giraffe, the horns of the Okapi are composed of two parts: ( 1) of the tuberosities or bumps of the cranial bones-the frontal alone in the case of the Okapi-which increase with age; and (2) of the sort of epiphysis, termed ossicusp by Prof. Lankester, which in the younger animal is separated from the underlying frontal by a stratum of fibrous structure, but finally co-ossifies with the frontal, without any trace of a suture remaining in the old animal. Apart from the circumstance that in the Giraffe this " ossicusp" is placed on two bones, the parietal and the frontal, we have this other difference, that the tips of the horns present a polished 1 ‘ La Belgique Coloniale,' May 25th, 1902, p. 245 ; P. Z. S. 1902, ii. p. 79. 2 P. Z. S. 1892, ii. p. 214, |