OCR Text |
Show 244 UR. P. CHALMERS MITCHELL ON [Apr. IB, 2. On a Young Female Giraffe from Nigeria. By P. C h a lm e r s M i t c h e l l , M .A . , D.Sc., Secretary to the Society. [Received April 18, 1905.] (Text-figures 50 & 51.) Early in April 1905 Captain H. C. B. Phillips, British Resident in Northern Nigeria, brought to London, and deposited in the Zoological Gardens, a young female Giraffe about a year old, and standing over 8 feet high, which he had obtained in Nigeria in the district of Gummel, about 300 miles due west of the south end of Lake Chad. Giraffes from Nigeria are not well known. Mr. O. Thomas (P. Z. S. 1898, p. 39) has made the skull and anterior cannon-bones of a female, obtained near the junction of the Benue and Niger rivers, some 300 miles to the south and west of the locality of Captain Phillips's specimen, the type of a subspecies, Giraff'cc Camelopardalis peralta; and Mr. Lydekker (P. Z. S. 1905, vol. i. p. 119) has referred to that name the skin, skull, and limb-bones of an adult bull obtained by Captain G. B. Gosling in Nigeria, and now in the British Museum (Natural History). The head of the young female at the Gardens displays a well-marked pair of main horns covered with very dark hair at the tips, feeble swellings in the place of the occipital horns, and a protuberance, rather large in area, but very flat, in place of the frontal horn. Mr. Thomas (loc. cit. p. 40) laid some stress on the direction of the main horns. In Captain Phillips's young female, as in the type-specimen, these horns are divergent when viewed from the front. It appears to me, however, that in this respect there is evidence of a good deal of individual variation in Giraffes. In the fine head of the bidl G. c. peralta mounted in the British Museum the main horns are asymmetrical, that on the left side being markedly bent in towards the middle line. In the two examples of the Kordofan Giraffe now living in the Society's Collection the condition of the main horns differs. In the female they are bent in towards the middle line ; in the male they diverge slightly. So also the inclination of the plane of the hoins to that of the forehead differs in individuals of the same race. So far as the shape of the head and horns goes, it would be difficult to distinguish this Nigerian Giraffe from the Nubian form. As Mr. Lydekker (loc. cit. p. 120) has given a description of the coloration of the Nigerian Giraffe based on his examination of Captain Gosling's specimen, it will be sufficient if I state how far examination of the young female now at the Gardens confirms the distinctness of the Nigerian race. The young female (text-fig. 50, p. 245), like the adult bull, is much paler than the Nubian form, the paleness being especially marked on the head and thighs of the female. In the photograph, reproduced as text-fig. 50, whilst |