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Show 1906.] FCETUS OF THE GIRAFFE. 631 a much less extensive, more feebly developed, and less sharply marked patch of hairs. On the head each horn consisted of a fold of skin in which the separate and movable horn-core could be felt as of gristly consistency. This fold of skin was capped by long hairs, which were black at the extremity as in the newly born and adult Giraffe. The mane was quite visible as a distinctly marked tract of close-set longish hairs definitely fawn-coloured; it ended just below the shoulder. At the root of the tail and for a little way down it there was a continuation of this crest, but not nearly so well-marked or so circumscribed. The tuft of black hairs at the end of the tail was quite obvious. A smaller tuft of shorter whity-brown hairs also existed at the extremity of the tail below the black patch. On the ventral median line in the abdominal region and upon the sternum was also a band of hair, not so pronounced as the mane, but still very conspicuous; this was not found between the legs, either hind or front. Finally, the vulva was encircled with longish white hairs. These are, I believe, the chief facts concerning the distribution of the hairy covering of the young Giraffe. The material does not exist for much comparison with the mode of hair-growtli in other Ungulates, and it is therefore all the more important to record the facts with a view to future comparisons. In the meantime I have been able to compare this foetus with one of evidently not very different age of Ovis vignei. I propose, however, to accumulate more facts with regard to the distribution of the hair and other external characters in the foetus of Mammals as opportunity serves me, and do not therefore give any detailed description of this foetus, the characters of which, moreover, are probably well enough known. I desire, however, to call attention to a patch of strongish hairs upon the wrist, exactly in the same position as the tuft of hair in the Giraffe illustrated in text-fig. 109. In the foetus of Ovis the patch was of very much less extent, not reaching nearly so far down the metacarpus. It was, furthermore, not nearly so sharply marked off from the surrounding integument as in the Giraffe, though composed of hairs of exactly the same whity-brown colour. |