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Cuvier entered into a correspondence with these two learned men, and a short time after he was elected to the chair of comparative anatomy at Paris His subsequent career is well known. This day was to me rather a memorable one, as the first on which I saw and slew the lofty, graceful-looking giraffe or camelopard, with which, during many years of my life, I had longed to form an acquaintance.
In fact, its structure like that of the camelopard is such that it finds great difficulty in reaching grass, or any other herbage, except where the latter chances to be very tall, or grows upon the declivity of a very steep hill.
He finds the giraffe or camelopard the most interesting animal at the Jardin des Plantes, and he dislikes a ceiling painted by Gros: "It is allegorical, which is a class of painting I detest."
This fact is explained by the circumstance that the Giraffe has an ardent affection for its Arabian keeper, and that it naturally is delighted with the sight of the turban and the costume of its keeper. Some authors have proved the mildness and docility of the camelopard, while others represent it as incapable of being tamed.
But I have snatched intervals to weed. I could see and hear everything growing around me in the warm rain. The army corn has hopped up as if it were parched. The yellow lilies are reeling up to the skies. Pig-weed has become camelopard weed. . . . Alas that you should be insulted with dried-apple pie and molasses preserves! Oh, horror! I thought that you would have fresh fruit and vegetables.
It was a fair city, the fairest and chief of that country; prosperous, powerful; a mart for numerous commodities, handicrafts, wares; round it a wild country and a waste of sand, ruled by the lion in his wrath, and in it the tiger, the camelopard, the antelope, and other animals.
Leaving our friends the squirrels, to whom we have certainly devoted quite sufficient attention, we pass along to quite a different race of animals that of the giraffe or camelopard. This is a noble-looking animal, as you see plainly enough by the engraving. The tongue of the giraffe is exquisitely contrived for grasping.
The camelopard can only defend itself by kicking; and it uses its heels in this way more effectively than any other creature, the horse not excepted. The prominence of its eyes enables it to see behind, when directing its heels against an enemy, and so secures its taking a certain aim; while the blow it can give will crush in the skull of a man, or leave him with a couple of broken ribs.
There is perhaps no animal living so graceful in form, more beautiful in colour, and more stately and majestic in appearance than the camelopard, now generally known by the French appellation of giraffe. Measuring eighteen feet from the hoof of the fore leg to the crest of its crown, it stands, as an American would express it, "The tallest animal in creation."
Of Gentile Bellini, whose work was softer, but less vigorous than his brother's, the best painting extant is that at Milan of St Mark preaching at Alexandria, in which the painter showed how he had profited by his residence at Constantinople in the introduction of much rich Turkish costume, and of an animal unknown to Europe at the time a camelopard. Andrea Mantegna was born near Padua.
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