Sixty-eight years ago Sir Richard (then Professor) Owen received a new-born giraffe from the Gardens, and reported on it to the Zoological Society. No one had examined one since that date; none were obtainable from the Zoo, and I could get none from African travellers and sportsmen, in spite of urgent requests. I was accordingly greatly pleased to secure one from the London Gardens. A great peculiarity of the young giraffe is that it is born with a pair of well-grown horns, nearly an inch long, and covered with coarse black hair. No other horn-bearing mammal--no antelope, buffalo, ox, sheep, goat, stag, or other deer--is born with horns, so far as we know, and we know a good many of these animals well. Before birth the young giraffe’s horns are flat from back to front, and quite soft and flexible. They can be pressed backwards, so as to be made to lie flat on the head. Directly after birth a hard, bony deposit commences inside the horn, and after some years’ growth it becomes firmly fused to the skull. But the hard bony core never breaks through the hairy skin which covers it. The bony core of the okapi’s pair of horns, on the contrary, does “cut” or break through the skin, exposing a sharp, hard point, a quarter of an inch in length. In the deer tribe, as everyone knows, the point of the bony horn-core spreads out as a large, branching growth from which all covering is shed, and forms the “antler.” The deer tribe shed the antlers every year from the top of the horn-core, and grow a new and larger pair to take the place of the old ones. Moreover, in them the horn-core itself is a stem-like upgrowth of the bone of the skull (of the frontal bone). In the okapi and the giraffe the horn-core is a separate bone, free at first and fusing with the skull only when the adult condition is reached. The little antlers or bare-points of the okapi’s horn-cones or cores seem to be shed in segments as growth goes on, and are only minute things compared with the antlers of stags. The giraffe’s horns, on the other hand, always remain covered by skin and hair and have a broad, rounded top, not a sharp point. The real clinching feature in the okapi and giraffe which decides at once their close affinity to one another is found in the outer tooth on each side of the group of eight teeth placed in the front of the lower jaw. In both this particular tooth has a broad, chisel-like crown, divided into two portions by a deep vertical slit. None of the other ungulate or hoofed animals have this very curious shape of tooth. It is a sort of family “mark” or “feature” in okapis and giraffes, as may be seen in specimens shown in the gallery of the Natural History Museum, where we have now no less than three fine, well-stuffed okapis and several varieties of giraffe. 7. _The Great Geologists of Last Century_