Page:Mammalia (Beddard).djvu/325

 which will probably prove to belong to a distinct genus. It has five horns, the additional pair being placed above the ears.

Sir Harry Johnston has quite recently made known another genus of Giraffidae living in the Semliki forest, Belgian Congo district. The skin and two skulls, as well as the bones of the feet, are known from specimens sent by Sir Harry Johnston to the Natural History Museum, and briefly described to the Zoological Society by Professor Ray Lankester. This creature, of which the native name is "Okapi," is proposed to be called Ocapia johnstoni. The first actual specimens which reached this country were two bandoliers made from the skin of the flanks, which were striped black and white, and were not unnaturally held to be portions of the skin of a new species of Zebra. The animal is of about the size of a Sable Antelope, and the back and sides are of a rich brown colour; it is only the fore- and hind-limbs which are striped, the striping being longitudinal, i.e. parallel with the long axis of the body. The head is Giraffe-like, but there are no external horns; wisps of curled hairs seem to represent the vestiges of the horns of other Giraffes. The tail is rather short, and the neck is rather thick and short. The skull is clearly Giraffine. The basicranial axis is straight, and the fontanelle in the lachrymal region is very large. Upon the frontal bones near their parietal border is a large boss on either side, which presumably represents the horn core or "os cornu." On the mandible the great length of the diastema between the incisors and premolars is a Giraffine characteristic. The Okapi lives in pairs in the deepest recesses of the forest.

We are acquainted with a few extinct forms, belonging to Giraffa, which are extra-African in range. G. sivalensis is from the Pliocene of the Siwalik Hills in India, G. attica from Greece. These remains, however, do not include the top of the skull, so that it is doubtful whether their horns were as in G. camelopardalis.

A closely-allied genus is the extinct Samotherium. This flourished in Miocene times, and its remains have been found in the Greek island of Samos. The neck and limbs are shorter than in the Giraffe, and the horns, longer than in Giraffa, are placed just above the orbit upon the frontal bones alone, instead of upon the boundary line of frontals and parietals as in Giraffa. In several ways, therefore, the existing Giraffe is a more modified or