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. These gigantic and exquisitely beautiful animals, which are admirably formed by nature to adorn the fair forests that clothe the boundless plains of the interior, are widely distributed throughout the interior of Southern Africa, but are nowhere to be met with in great numbers. In countries unmolested by the intrusive foot of man, the giraffe is found generally in herds varying from twelve to sixteen; but I have not unfrequently met with herds containing thirty individuals, and on one occasion I counted forty together; this, however, was owing to chance, and about sixteen maybe reckoned as the average number of a herd. These herds are composed of giraffes of various sizes, from the young giraffe of nine or ten feet in height, to the dark, chestnut-colored old bull of the herd, whose exalted head towers above his companions, generally attaining 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