The Tower Menagerie : $b comprising the natural history of the animals contained in that establishment; with anecdotes of their characters and history.Bennett, Edward Turner
History
The Tower Menagerie : $b comprising the natural history of the animals contained in that establishment; with anecdotes of their characters and history.
The species of the group, of which the Llama forms the type, have
been involved by the imperfect descriptions of naturalists in almost
inextricable confusion. No less than five have been admitted; but the
variations of colour and of size, and the degree of length and fineness
of the wool, differences rather commercial than natural, afford almost
the only positive distinctions that have yet been laid down between them;
and when we consider that some of them have been for ages in a state of
domestication, it will readily be allowed that such characters as these
are, to say the least, trivial and uncertain. Our animals, which are
nearly four feet in height at the shoulder, and somewhat more than five
feet to the top of the head, have the neck, the back, the sides, and
the tail, which is rather short, covered with a beautiful coat of long,
bright brown, woolly hair. The long and pointed ears, and the small and
attenuated head, on which the hair is short, close, and even, are of
a grayish mouse-colour; the outside of the legs is of the same colour
with the sides of the body; and their inside, as also the under part
of the body and the throat, pure white. The hair on the limbs is short
and smooth. In these respects they offer but little to distinguish them
from any of the animals which have been exhibited in this country under
the various names of Llamas, Pacos, and Guanacos. There is, however, at
present in the Garden of the Zoological Society, an animal, which besides
being of larger size, covered with longer and coarser wool, and entirely
white (which latter circumstance may be purely accidental), differs
remarkably in the form of the forehead, which in it is perfectly flat,
while in our animals it rises in a strong curve. This character, it is
probable, affords a permanent ground of distinction, although we venture
not at present to speak decidedly respecting it.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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