ning to a height of upward of eighteen feet. The females are of
lower stature and more delicately formed than the males, their height
averaging from sixteen to seventeen feet. Some writers have discovered
ugliness and a want of grace in the giraffe, but I consider that he is
one of the most strikingly beautiful animals in the creation; and when a
herd of them is seen scattered through a grove of the picturesque
parasol-topped acacias which adorn their native plains, and on whose
uppermost shoots they are enabled to browse by the colossal height with
which nature has so admirably endowed them, he must, indeed, be slow of
conception who fails to discover both grace and dignity in all their
movements. There can be no doubt, that every animal is seen to the
greatest advantage in the haunts which nature destined him to adorn; and
among the various living creatures which beautify this fair creation I
have often traced a remarkable resemblance between the animal and the
general appearance of the locality in which it is found. This I first
remarked at an early period of my life, when entomology occupied a part
of my attention No person following this interesting pursuit can fail to
observe the extraordinary likeness which insects bear to the various
abodes in which they are met with. Thus, among the long green grass we
find a variety of long green insects, whose legs and antennae so resemble
the shoots emanating from the stalks of the grass that it requires a
practiced eye to distinguish them. Throughout sandy districts varieties
of insects are met with of a color similar to the sand which they
inhabit. Among the green leaves of the various trees of the forest
innumerable leaf-colored insects are to be found; while, closely
adhering to the rough gray bark of these forest-trees, we observe
beautifully-colored, gray-looking; moths of various patterns, yet
altogether so resembling the bark as to be invisible to the passing
observer. In like manner among quadrupeds I have traced a corresponding
analogy, for, even in the case of the stupendous elephant, the ashy
color of his hide so corresponds with the general appearance of the gray
thorny jungles which he frequents throughout the day, that a person
unaccustomed to hunting elephants, standing on a commanding situation,
might look down upon a herd and fail to detect their presence. And
further, in the case of the giraffe, which is invariably met with among
venerable forests, where inn