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I have wondered ever since, Whether the beasts ever do get used to those small places of confinement; Whether the monkeys have that very horrible flavour in their free state; Whether wild animals have a natural ear for time and tune, and therefore every four-footed creature began to howl in despair when the band began to play; What the giraffe does with his neck when his cart is shut up; and, Whether the elephant feels ashamed of himself when he is brought out of his den to stand on his head in the presence of the whole Collection.
On the 24th of May, 1836, four giraffes were exhibited in the Zoological gardens at Regent's Park. They were brought from the south-west of Kordofan, and were transported to London at an expense of 2386 pounds three shillings and one penny. From a casual glance at the giraffe, its fore legs would appear nearly twice as long as the hind ones, but such is not the case.
The yards of the giraffe are next door, but separated by a high wire fence, so that even the long neck of the giraffe cannot bend over and touch the hippos. Of all animals, the giraffe is, perhaps, the most odd, his neck is so very long, and his markings so rich. He looks as if he had a stiff neck, he holds his head so high, and seems so grand.
"Hi!" says I. "How do you get this giraffe of yours under way?" She held up the decoys. "Who kill-a dem ducks?" says she. I p'inted to the reverend. "He did," says I. And then I cal'late I must have had one of them things they call an inspiration. "And he's willing to pay for 'em," I says. "Pay thirty-five dolla?" says she. "You bet!" says I. But I'd forgot Clarissa.
The burst gun lay where he had left it in the grass, and the dead giraffe lay where it had fallen by the trees; the wind blew, and the grass waved, the sun spread his pyramid of light from horizon to horizon, and in the sparkle above a black dot hung trembling above the stricken beast at the edge of the wood. The black figure of the man continued its headlong course.
So they ate until every one, even Giraffe, announced that he had had enough; but by that time the frying-pans were empty, and the coffee-pot ditto, so perhaps it may have been this condition of things that influenced some of them to confess to being filled.
His four rivals were bending every energy to heat up the water in their cups, testing it now and then with disappointed grunts, as it failed to scald their fingers, when a shout from Giraffe announced that he needed the attention of the judge, as his cup of water had commenced to bubble.
Again, how astonishing on the creative, how natural on the evolutionary hypothesis, that the arrangement of bones in the hand of a man, the wing of a bat, the fin of a porpoise, the leg of a horse, should be precisely the same; the number of vertebræ in the neck of a giraffe, and in that of an elephant the same; the primitive germs from which a man, a dog, a frog, and a lobster are gradually evolved, to all appearance the same the same microscopic atom of homogeneous matter, undistinguishable by any known test from an animalcule almost at the bottom of the organic scale!
We will make no more pits; but let me once more set my eyes on a giraffe and, mark me, it is mine, if I have to run it down and capture it with my own hands." "That is not possible," remarked Hendrik. "True, you might catch a wild elephant; but what would you do with it? or, rather, what would it do with you?"
In the dreadful state of the river we could not speculate upon the arrival of reinforcements from Khartoum. Our cuttings and canals in the Dalir Giraffe might have closed up; or they might have improved: of this we were ignorant. I had sent off my letters to England, also those to the Khedive, complaining of the conspiracy of the officers, and inclosing the documents.
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