(5.) “In this kingdom the people are not warlike.”—It is not surprising that Schiltberger should have been struck by the pacific disposition of the people of Baghdad, a city that owed its opulence to industry and commerce. Baghdad was reconstructed by Ahmen ben Oweis after its destruction by Timour (Weil, _Gesch. der Chal._, v, 98). The inhabitants were Arabs and Persians, as they are now. That a large park and menagerie should have existed is in the highest degree probable, for we read in Zosimus (_Hist. Rom._, iii, 23), that the troops of the emperor Julian discovered a royal garden in Mesopotamia, in which wild beasts were kept: εἰς περίβολον ὃν Βασιλέως θήραν ἐκάλον. The Greeks of Heraclius’s expedition, A.D. 627, found a large park close to the residence of Chosroes (Ritter, _Die Erdkunde_ etc., ix, 503), in which were many ostriches, wild boar, peacocks, pheasants, lions, tigers, etc. Another instance was the residence, near Baghdad, of the caliph El-Harim, which stood within grounds wherein were wild beasts of every description (_ibid._, x, 258).—BRUUN. (6.) “It has long fore-legs, and the hinder are short.”—Soon after the battle of Angora, the sultan Faradj sent two ambassadors with rich presents to Timour, one being a giraffe (Weil, _Gesch. der Chal._, v, 97), which Clavijo, who met the Egyptian envoys at Khoi, designated a gornufa. Schiltberger must have originally written surnofa, rather than “surnasa”. The giraffe he saw in Timour’s possession was probably one of the finest of its species, so that allowance should be made for his ascribing to its neck a length of four fathoms; indeed, we learn from Clavijo that this very animal was able to extend its neck so as to reach herbage at a height of 30 feet to 36 feet. Schiltberger was under the impression, as was his contemporary De Lannoy (_Voy. et Ambass._, 88), that the Nile traversed India before entering Egypt,[1] which accounts for his supposition that the giraffe was indigenous to the former country.—BRUUN. [1] That Ethiopia was called India, and thus confounded with real India, is fully set forth by Colonel Yule in a note to Marco Polo, ii, 426.—ED. (6A.) Zerypha—yellow-coloured—is the Persian for giraffe, from zerd—yellow—and fam—colour; a name corrupted by the Turks and Arabs to zerafè, whence “surnasa”. The giraffe at the British Museum could have reached food at a height of at least twenty feet, as Dr. Günther, Keeper of Zoology, has been good enough to inform me. The finest specimen at the Museum d’Histoire Naturelle, at Paris, is even inferior in size, according to the measurements kindly supplied by Professor Milne-Edward of that institution. Schiltberger must have greatly miscalculated the proportions of the animal he saw, allowing even for probable degeneration; large giraffes having now become very scarce.