"Giraffe" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Erasmus Darwin and Buffon were not so much as named. Mr. Wallace, on the contrary, at once raised the Lamarckian spectre, and declared it exorcized. He said the Lamarckian hypothesis was "quite unnecessary." The giraffe did not "acquire its long neck by desiring to reach the foliage of the more lofty shrubs, and constantly stretching its neck for this purpose, but because any varieties which occurred among its antitypes with a longer neck than usual at once secured a fresh range ...
— The Humour of Homer and Other Essays • Samuel Butler
... sharp-pointed hoofs well adapted for digging, and there is little difficulty in comprehending their mode of subsistence. Some animals, on the other hand, are never seen but in the vicinity of water. The presence of the rhinoceros, of the buffalo and gnu ('Catoblepas gnu'), of the giraffe, the zebra, and pallah ('Antilope melampus'), is always a certain indication of water being within a distance of seven or eight miles; but one may see hundreds of elands ('Boselaphus oreas'), gemsbuck, the tolo or koodoo ('Strepsiceros capensis'), also springbucks ('Gazella euchore') and ostriches, ...
— Missionary Travels and Researches in South Africa - Journeys and Researches in South Africa • David Livingstone
... evening at ten o'clock. There was a fire at my wood-seller's. The sky was rose color and the Seine the color of gooseberry sirup. I worked at the engine for three hours and I came home as worn out as the Turk with the giraffe. ...
— The George Sand-Gustave Flaubert Letters • George Sand, Gustave Flaubert
... especially with Mr. Gholson, and I liked Lieutenant Helm less than ever, noticing anew the unaccountable freedom with which Camille seemed to think herself entitled to rebuke him. "Oh, I'm in your power," he cried to her, "and I'll call him a spotless giraffe if you want me to! that's what he is; I've always thought so!" The spring-wagon was taking the left fork and he cantered ahead to begin his good-byes there and save her for the last. When he made his adieu to her ...
— The Cavalier • George Washington Cable
... sold her a model of the Alexandrian library, a specimen of the original type invented by Memnon the Egyptian, and a manuscript of the first play acted by Thespis. These had not exhausted the stock of the dealer: he possessed the skin of a giraffe killed in the Roman amphitheatre; the head of King Arthur's spear; and the breech of the first cannon fired at the siege of Constantinople. The jury, however, thought that the virtuoso having ordered those curiosities, ...
— Blackwoods Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 366, April, 1846 • Various
... commenced cutting up the elephant, while messengers were despatched to summon carriers to convey the flesh and tusks. As soon as it was sent off the hunters continued the chase. Ned shot a zebra, which raised him in the estimation of his companions. A giraffe was also seen, and creeping up to it among the long grass the party surrounded it. Before it could escape a bullet from Sayd's gun wounded it in the shoulder, when spears and javelins thrust at it from every side soon ended its life. There was great rejoicing when this meat was brought ...
— Ned Garth - Made Prisoner in Africa. A Tale of the Slave Trade • W. H. G. Kingston
... opposite side of the avenue and her head was in the air. She had long since ceased to carry her spine in a tubercular droop and when she chose she could draw her body up until it seemed to elongate like the neck of a giraffe, and overtop Mortimer or whoever happened to have ...
— The Sisters-In-Law • Gertrude Atherton
... the competition with allied groups of birds. The relation between the extraordinarily lengthened bill of the Toucan and its mode of obtaining food, is therefore precisely similar to that between the long neck and lips of the Giraffe and the mode of browsing of the animal. The bill of the Toucan can scarcely be considered a very perfectly-formed instrument for the end to which it is applied, as here explained; but nature appears not to invent organs at once for the functions to which they are now adapted, ...
— The Naturalist on the River Amazons • Henry Walter Bates
... they got in the tent pa said to the principal owner of the show, who had made fun of him: "Here's your elephant, and whenever any of your old animals get on the warpath, and you want 'em rounded up, don't forget my number, 'cause I can knock the spots out of any animal except a giraffe." The crowd cheered pa again and he got down off the elephant, took off his fire extinguisher, and handed Bolivar a piece of rag carpet, and said: "Eat it, you old catamaran, or I'll kill you," and Bolivar was so scared of pa he eat the carpet, which shows the power ...
— Peck's Bad Boy at the Circus • George W. Peck
... stalking, yonder comes the tall giraffe, Hot with thirst, the gloomy waters of the dull lagoon to quaff; O'er the naked waste behold her, with parched tongue, all panting hasten— Now she sucks the cool draught, kneeling, from the stagnant, ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VII. • Various
... him," announced Teddy with a comprehensive wave of the hand as they passed the giraffe, which stood silent in his roped enclosure, his head far up in ...
— The Circus Boys Across The Continent • Edgar B. P. Darlington
... entered the room. One was the long Mr Pilkington. The other, who looked shorter and stouter than he really was beside his giraffe-like companion, was a thickset, fleshy man in the early thirties with a blond, clean-shaven, double-chinned face. He had smooth yellow hair, an unwholesome complexion, and light green eyes, set close together. From the edge of the semi-circle ...
— The Little Warrior - (U.K. Title: Jill the Reckless) • P. G. Wodehouse
... and their multiplied form only enhances this confusion. Beside which, these labels are of necessity frequently placed at such a height that, in order to decipher them, the head of the observer needs to be perched on a neck somewhat like the giraffe. So forcibly impressed am I with the soundness and value of this newly-devised plan, that I am led to predict that its adoption will sooner or later find favour among other kindred institutions even of a ...
— Practical Taxidermy • Montagu Browne
... coat and a quaintly piquant Napoleon hat of Alice Blue, and they walked along the Avenue and into the Zoo, where they properly admired the grandeur of the elephant and the collar-height of the giraffe, but did not visit the monkey house because Gloria said that monkeys smelt ...
— The Beautiful and Damned • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... found the gall-bladder having a very different degree of development, and there is reason to believe it is sometimes absent. Professor Owen has shown that this is the case with the gall-bladder of the giraffe." ...
— Darwinism (1889) • Alfred Russel Wallace
... in Paris visiting churches, picture galleries, palaces, and other show places. He finds the giraffe or camelopard the most interesting animal at the Jardin des Plantes, and he dislikes a ceiling painted by Gros: "It is allegorical, which is a class of painting I detest." He deplores the Continental Sunday: "Oh! that we appreciated ...
— Samuel F. B. Morse, His Letters and Journals - In Two Volumes, Volume I. • Samuel F. B. Morse
... wings, useless for flight. One specimen that has been found is upward of thirteen feet in height. There is no reason why some should not have been much taller. More compares its height to that of a giraffe. The Maoris call this bird the Moa, and their legends and traditions are full of mention of it. When they first came to the island, six or seven hundred years ago, they found these vast birds everywhere, and hunted them for food. ...
— A Strange Manuscript Found in a Copper Cylinder • James De Mille
... following your meteoric career in the papers! As I nibble at my toast of a morning I prop the New York Herald against the water giraffe and read, spilling my coffee down my neck: 'The life of the party was Right Tackle Thayer. Seizing the elongated sphere and tucking it under his strong left arm, Thayer dashed into the embattled line of the helpless adversary. Hurling the foe right and left and ...
— Left Tackle Thayer • Ralph Henry Barbour
... the door, presented a radiant grin, and invited inspection of his Shanghais. Kate went with him to the cellar. There stood two feathered bipeds on their tip-toes, with their giraffe necks stretched up to my sister's swinging shelf where the cream and butter were kept. It spoke well for the size of their craws certainly, that, during the two minutes Ben was away, they had each devoured a "print" of butter, about ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 5, March, 1858 • Various
... and he accounted for the gradual differentiation of types by the hypothesis that they were the results of the inheritance of characteristics which had been acquired by continued use—as, for example, in the case of the giraffe who was supposed to have owed the length of its neck to the efforts of its ancestors to browse upon trees that were just beyond their reach. He maintained that the changes produced in the parents by temperature, nutrition, repeated use or disuse, were inherited so that they ...
— God and the World - A Survey of Thought • Arthur W. Robinson
... I pulled Nelly Martin's hair, and was sent down three. Then I was fourth, and my pencil squeaked my slate and I was sent down six. Then Cyril had to spell 'giraffe,' and I said 'one r and two f's,' and she ...
— An Australian Lassie • Lilian Turner
... enormous size, and some were by far the largest of all four-footed animals, exceeded in bulk only by the modern whales. In contrast to the carnivorous dinosaurs these are quadrupedal, with very small head, blunt teeth, long giraffe-like neck, elephantine body and limbs, long massive tail prolonged at the tip into a whip-lash as in the lizards. Like the elephant they have five short toes on each foot, probably buried in life in a large soft pad, but the inner digits bear large claws, blunt like ...
— Dinosaurs - With Special Reference to the American Museum Collections • William Diller Matthew
... threw back his head and roared. "Give me somep'n easy! You don't know no more how to play a hand of cards than a giraffe does. I'll throw in all of my Blue Gulch gold-stock—and it's worth eight hundred thousand dollars if it's worth a cent—I'll put it up against that tin automobile of yours, divide chips even and play you freeze-out for it. You ...
— His Own People • Booth Tarkington
... pert, are insufferable; and as for attempts to be comic they are disgraceful in women whether they succeed or fail. The comic is ungainly and exaggerated, and so is in some sort related to the sublime. The elephant is comic, the camel and the giraffe are ...
— Glimpses of Bengal • Sir Rabindranath Tagore
... real, life is earnest, and you have a bank roll of real profits a giraffe couldn't ...
— Cappy Ricks Retires • Peter B. Kyne
... to the performing ring and there stood the hated ring-master facing a line of animals standing in a straight line reaching from one side of the ring to the other. In the middle stood the elephant, with the summer house, as Billy called it, on his back; next him stood a camel; next the camel a giraffe; next the giraffe a horse; next the horse, a zebra, and last a little Shetland pony. On the other side of the elephant were more animals standing in ...
— Billy Whiskers - The Autobiography of a Goat • Frances Trego Montgomery
... beds of Paris. Daubenton had also slightly anticipated Cuvier's law of correlation, giving "a very remarkable example of the mode of procedure to follow in order to solve these kinds of questions by the way in which he had recognized a bone of a giraffe whose skeleton he did ...
— Lamarck, the Founder of Evolution - His Life and Work • Alpheus Spring Packard
... disappeared. The ice had broken up, far up the river, and large cakes were floating past, accumulating at the bend below the town and raising the water level well above the top of the Marquis's dam. The river was what Joe Ferris had a way of calling "swimmin' deep for a giraffe." ...
— Roosevelt in the Bad Lands • Hermann Hagedorn
... lately passed, we might now imagine ourselves in an extensive park. A lawn, level as a billiard-table, was everywhere spread with a soft carpet of luxuriant green grass, spangled with flowers, and shaded by spreading mokaalas—a large species of acacia which forms the favourite food of the giraffe. The gaudy yellow blossoms with which these remarkable trees were covered yielded an aromatic and overpowering perfume—while small troops of striped quaggas, or wild asses, and of brindled gnoos ... enlivened ...
— South Africa and the Transvaal War, Vol. 1 (of 6) - From the Foundation of Cape Colony to the Boer Ultimatum - of 9th Oct. 1899 • Louis Creswicke
... But when she met Mary Rose's eyes, filled with a great hunger for merry-go-rounds, she laughed softly and told Mr. Jerry that, of course, she wouldn't take a dare, she never had and she never would, and she thought she'd choose the giraffe because his long neck gave a rider so much to ...
— Mary Rose of Mifflin • Frances R. Sterrett
... prefer drier climates, as for instance the oryx antelopes, gazelles and the ostrich. There is a complete blank in the distribution of this last between the districts to the south of the Zambezi and those of East Africa between Victoria Nyanza and the Indian Ocean. The giraffe is found in the Luanga valley; it is also met with in the extreme north-east of the country. The ordinary African rhinoceros is still occasionally, but very rarely, seen in the Shire Highlands, The African elephant is fairly common throughout the whole territory. Lions and leopards are very abundant; ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 3 - "Brescia" to "Bulgaria" • Various
... evolution was wholly due to the direct action of surrounding circumstances, to the intercrossing of existing forms, and above all to the actual efforts of animals themselves. In other words, he had not discovered natural selection, the cardinal idea of Charles Darwin's epoch-making book. For him, the giraffe had acquired its long neck by constant reaching up to the boughs of trees; the monkey had acquired its opposable thumb by constant grasping at the neighbouring branches; and the serpent had acquired its sinuous shape by constant wriggling ...
— Falling in Love - With Other Essays on More Exact Branches of Science • Grant Allen
... Christchurch stands sixteen feet from the ground, and its various proportions are all of a character to harmonize with its remarkable height. This skeleton shows the marvellous bird to have been, when standing upright, five feet taller than the average full-grown giraffe. It belonged to the giants who dwelt upon the earth perhaps twenty thousand years ago, in the period of the mammoth ...
— Foot-prints of Travel - or, Journeyings in Many Lands • Maturin M. Ballou
... flotation of bubbles are all examples of gravitation: or that the purifying of the blood by breathing, the burning of a candle, and the rusting of iron are all cases of oxidation: or that the colouring of the underside of a red-admiral's wings, the spots of the giraffe, the shape and attitude of a stick-caterpillar, the immobility of a bird on its nest, and countless other cases, though superficially so different, agree in this, that they conceal and thereby protect ...
— Logic - Deductive and Inductive • Carveth Read
... commotion there was then! The elephant on the top, and his trunk stretched out; in a minute or two he would have unfastened the wire; the giraffe's long neck was stretched out; one dove flew away directly, and some crows sat on the eaves. Mr. and Mrs. Dyer and Jedidiah started back, while the elephant with his trunk helped out some of the smaller animals, who stepped into rows on the ironing-board ...
— The Last of the Peterkins - With Others of Their Kin • Lucretia P. Hale
... "Sure, Giraffe. Brace up old fellow. You'll have your jaws working right soon, now. And here's a dandy little spring, right among the trees! How shady and cool ...
— The Boy Scouts' First Camp Fire - or, Scouting with the Silver Fox Patrol • Herbert Carter
... in the Forest of Gugu that morning. Chipo the Wild Boar had bitten the tail off Arx the Giraffe while the latter had his head among the leaves of a tree, eating his breakfast. Arx kicked with his heels and struck Tirrip, the great Kangaroo, who had a new baby in her pouch. Tirrip knew it was the Wild Boar's fault, so she knocked him over with one powerful blow and then ran ...
— The Magic of Oz • L. Frank Baum
... Giraffe, found only in South Africa, is like the camel in some respects, and the deer in others. That long neck which it arches so gracefully when you offer it a bun, enables it in its forest-home to feed upon the leaves of trees; so you see it is for ...
— Twilight And Dawn • Caroline Pridham
... represented. Michael Scott, his astrologer, translated Aristotle's "History of Animals." Frederick studied ornithology, on which he wrote a treatise, and possessed a menagerie of rare animals, including a giraffe, and other strange creatures. The popular dialect of Italy owed much to him, being elevated into a written language by his use of it in his love-sonnets. Of the poems written by himself, his son Enzio, and his friends, several ...
— Historical Tales, Vol 5 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality, German • Charles Morris
... longer found except occasionally in the river valleys. Leopards, both spotted and black, are numerous and often of great size; hyaenas are found everywhere and are hardy and fierce; the lynx, wolf, wild dog and jackal are also common. Boars and badgers are more rarely seen. The giraffe is found in the western districts, the zebra and wild ass frequent the lower plateaus and the rocky hills of the north. There are large herds of buffalo and antelope, and gazelles of many varieties and in great numbers are met with in most parts of the country. Among the varieties are the ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... and a little boy named Boris. And Peter took him out for a walk and took him all around school. Then I took him out to my house and saw all my play things. And then I took him to Central Park and showed him sea lions and the giraffe and the elephant and I showed how they eat by their trunks. And he thought it was queer. And he said he was afraid of animals and so I took him home. I told him to tell his mother about it and his mother said, "You want to go for another walk?" and he said, "Yes, but not where ...
— Here and Now Story Book - Two- to seven-year-olds • Lucy Sprague Mitchell
... wild, bear the privations and discomforts of long voyages better than would be supposed. The elephant, the giraffe, the rhinoceros, and even the hippopotamus, do not seem to suffer much at sea. Some of the camels imported by the U.S. government into Texas from the Crimea and Northern Africa were a whole year on shipboard. On the other hand, George Sand, in Un Hiver au Midi, gives an amusing description ...
— The Earth as Modified by Human Action • George P. Marsh
... long ox-waggons far into the northern Transvaal, and oftentimes into the wilderness beyond the Zambesi. Women and children accompanied the expeditions and remained behind in the ox-waggons while the men rode away into the bush to search for buck, giraffe, and lion. Hardy men and women these were who braved the dangers of wild beasts and the terrors of the fever country, yet these treks to the north were as certain annual functions as the Nachtmaals in the churches. Men who went into the wild bush to hunt for the lions, which ...
— With the Boer Forces • Howard C. Hillegas
... places of confinement; Whether the monkeys have that very horrible flavour in their free state; Whether wild animals have a natural ear for time and tune, and therefore every four-footed creature began to howl in despair when the band began to play; What the giraffe does with his neck when his cart is shut up; and, Whether the elephant feels ashamed of himself when he is brought out of his den to stand on his head in the presence of the ...
— Reprinted Pieces • Charles Dickens
... Kordofan and Darfur afford grazing-grounds to a multitude of cattle, and give means of livelihood to great numbers of Baggara or cow-herd Arabs, who may also pursue with activity and stratagem the fleet giraffe and the still fleeter ostrich. To the south-east lies Bahr-el-Ghazal, a great tract of country occupied by dense woods and plentifully watered. Further south and nearer the Equator the forests and marshes become exuberant with tropical growths, and the whole face of the land is moist and green. ...
— The River War • Winston S. Churchill
... recovered suddenly, and told her she looked awfully pretty, which cheered her very much. She was feeling rather tired. She had spent several hours in the nursery that day, pretending to be a baby giraffe with so much success that Archie had insisted upon countless encores, until, like all artists who have to repeat the same part too often, she felt the performance was ...
— Love's Shadow • Ada Leverson
... might believe that all giraffes have long necks, even though we had seen but one; but such a belief would exist because, by many examples of other animals, we have learned that a single specimen will fairly represent all other specimens of the same class. On the other hand, if this one giraffe should possess one brown eye and one white eye, we should not expect all other giraffes to have such eyes, for our observation of many hundreds of animals teaches us that the eyes of an animal are usually alike in color. In order to establish a true generalization, the essential characteristics ...
— Composition-Rhetoric • Stratton D. Brooks
... soil erosion; deforestation; desertification; wildlife populations (such as elephant, hippopotamus, giraffe, and lion) threatened because of poaching and ...
— The 1999 CIA Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... it is not in the cards to play the game of health that way. There "aint no sich animal" said the ruben as he saw the giraffe in the circus, and likewise there "aint no sich thing" as health and happiness for the man who persistently antagonizes nature, and hunts ease where ...
— Evening Round Up - More Good Stuff Like Pep • William Crosbie Hunter
... been very kind to her creatures," said a giraffe to an elephant. "For example, your neck being so very short, she has given you a proboscis wherewith to reach your food; and I having no proboscis, she has bestowed upon ...
— Cobwebs From an Empty Skull • Ambrose Bierce (AKA: Dod Grile)
... and extravagant. The mind of the Englishman does not readily accept anything he cannot see or even sometimes anything he can see which is unprecedented in his experience, so that like the West American farmer, confronted for the first time by the sight of a giraffe, his impulse is to cry out angrily: "I don't ...
— Secret Societies And Subversive Movements • Nesta H. Webster
... so?" He got up and looked down at the canvas, bending above it like some genial giraffe. He straightened himself, smiling. "'Tis kind o' dobby," he admitted. "Mebbe ...
— Uncle William - The Man Who Was Shif'less • Jennette Lee
... that's the bear That tore the naughty boys to pieces; Horned cattle!—only hear How the dreadful camel wheezes! That's the tall giraffe, my boy, Who stoops to hear the morning lark; 'Twas him who waded Noah's flood, And scorned the refuge ...
— The Universal Reciter - 81 Choice Pieces of Rare Poetical Gems • Various
... the bear's ethereal grace, The bland hyena's laugh, The footstep of the elephant, The neck of the giraffe; I love her still, believe me, Though my heart its passion hides; "She is all my fancy painted her," But oh! how ...
— The Life and Letters of Lewis Carroll • Stuart Dodgson Collingwood
... the megatherium) to the giraffe, so is the colossal business block of Chicago to the sky-scraper of New York. There is a proportion and dignity in the mammoth buildings of Chicago which is lacking in most of those which form the jagged sky-line of Manhattan Island. For one reason or another—no doubt ...
— America To-day, Observations and Reflections • William Archer
... obliged to take refuge behind the deficiency of the geological record, and to suppose facts and proofs may hereafter be discovered, when few are now known to favor the new hypothesis. We can see no more reason why a giraffe should have had a long neck, because he wished to crop the leaves of tall trees, than that mankind should have become winged, because in all times both children and men have wished to fly. Nor do we think Mr. Wallace's opinion any better founded, that, owing to ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XII. July, 1863, No. LXIX. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... its allies with horns and without upper incisors as the Buffalo, Stag Fallow Deer, Wild Goat, Swine, Goat, wild Goats Muskdeers, Chamois, Giraffe. ...
— The Notebooks of Leonardo Da Vinci, Complete • Leonardo Da Vinci
... Lieutenant William Paterson, whose chief aim was to collect plants and other objects of natural history. He penetrated a little further north than the Orange River, and into Kaffraria a good deal further east than Fish River. To him we owe the first notice of the giraffe; and his narrative is rich in important observations on the natural history, structure, and ...
— Celebrated Travels and Travellers - Part 2. The Great Navigators of the Eighteenth Century • Jules Verne
... Ingersoll's lecture, the one that was in the papers when Bob was here. You see I thought if a newspaper that all the pious folks takes in their families, could publish Ingersoll's speech, it wouldn't do any hurt for a poor little boy, who ain't knee high to a giraffe, to speak it in school, but they made me dry up. The teacher is a republican, and when Ingersoll was speaking around here on politix, the time of the election, the teacher said Bob was the smartest man this country ever produced. I heard ...
— The Grocery Man And Peck's Bad Boy - Peck's Bad Boy and His Pa, No. 2 - 1883 • George W. Peck
... the tens of thousands of people who were crowded in the seats of the Colosaeum, ornamented with all the spoils that the wealth of a world can give; I saw in the arena below animals of the most extraordinary kind, and which have rarely been seen living in modern Europe—the giraffe, the zebra, the rhinoceros, and the ostrich from the deserts of Africa beyond the Niger, the hippopotamus from the Upper Nile, and the royal tiger and the gnu from the banks of the Ganges. Looking over Rome, which, in its majesty of palaces and ...
— Consolations in Travel - or, the Last Days of a Philosopher • Humphrey Davy
... lion's shaggy jaws he tore, To earth he smote the foaming boar, He crushed the dragon's fiery crest, And scaled the condor's dizzy nest; Till hardy sons and daughters fair Increased around his woodland lair. Then his victorious bow unstrung On the great bison's horn he hung. Giraffe and elk he left to hold The wilderness of boughs in peace, And trained his youth to pen the fold, To press the cream, and weave the fleece. As shrunk the streamlet in its bed, As black and scant the herbage grew, O'er endless plains his flocks he led Still to new brooks ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 3. (of 4) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... powerful arms and great claws. Strongly rooted, indeed, must that tree have been, which could have resisted such force! The Mylodon, moreover, was furnished with a long extensile tongue like that of the giraffe, which, by one of those beautiful provisions of nature, thus reaches with the aid of its long neck its leafy food. I may remark, that in Abyssinia the elephant, according to Bruce, when it cannot reach with its proboscis the branches, ...
— A Naturalist's Voyage Round the World - The Voyage Of The Beagle • Charles Darwin
... Louis!' and felt, as well as saw, the springing ascent to the box of a tall apparition, in a scanty lilac cotton dress, an outgrown black mantle, and a brown straw bonnet, scarcely confining an overprofusion of fair hair. Louis let go the reins to catch hold of both hands, and cry, 'Well, old Giraffe! what ...
— Dynevor Terrace (Vol. I) - or, The Clue of Life • Charlotte M. Yonge
... we are ascending the staircase leading to Aunt Ursula's. My wife counts the steps as she pulls herself up by the hand-rail, and I carry the famous cushion, the bonbons, and my son, who has insisted on bringing his giraffe with him. ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... of gaudily painted beasts that revolved about this musical atrocity. A fashion of horses seemed to predominate, but there was also an ostrich (a bearded Frenchman being astride this bird for the moment), a zebra, a lion, and a gaudily emblazoned giraffe. I shuddered as I thought of the evil possibilities that might be suggested to my two companions by this affair. For the moment I was pleased to note that they had forgotten my supposed indisposition, yet another equally ...
— Ruggles of Red Gap • Harry Leon Wilson
... case they hunt the prey in a pack; that is, the lion and the lionesses all hunt the prey together; and they are even helped by the older cubs. They need to hunt in a pack when the prey happens to be large, such as a buffalo or a giraffe. A lion by himself could seldom kill a buffalo ...
— The Wonders of the Jungle, Book Two • Prince Sarath Ghosh
... neighbour the macrauchen—equally massive, equally heavy, equally vast, equally peaceful. The stranger resembles the huge rhinoceros, elevated on much loftier limbs. But his most remarkable feature is the enormously long neck, like that of the camel, but carried to the altitude of that of the giraffe. Thus he thrusts his great muzzle into the very centre of the leafy trees, and gathering with his prehensile and flexible lip the succulent twigs and foliage, he too finds abundance of food for his immense body in the teeming vegetation ...
— The Western World - Picturesque Sketches of Nature and Natural History in North - and South America • W.H.G. Kingston
... responsible for them in captivity are constantly harassed by fears that they will stampede in their stalls or yards, and break their own necks and legs in most unexpected ways. They require greater vigilance than any other hoofed animals we know. Sometimes a giraffe will develop foolishness to such a degree as to be unwilling to go out of its own huge door, into a shady ...
— The Minds and Manners of Wild Animals • William T. Hornaday
... broad-shouldered masculine edition of his mother not much higher than Fred's shoulder—which made it the harder that he should be held superior—was always as simple as possible, and thought no more of Fred's disinclination to scholarship than of a giraffe's, wishing that he himself were more of the same height. He was lying on the ground now by his mother's chair, with his straw hat laid flat over his eyes, while Jim on the other side was reading aloud from that beloved writer who has ...
— Middlemarch • George Eliot
... to block his way. I am too sure he will not return. The first months comprise all the shocks of disappointment that are likely to disgust a new-comer. The sphere of opportunity opens slowly, but to a man of his abilities and culture—rare enough here—with the sureness of chemistry. The Giraffe entering Paris wore the label, "Eh bien, messieurs, il n'y a qu'une bete de plus!" And Oxonians are cheap in London; but here, the eternal economy of sending things where they are wanted makes a ...
— The Correspondence of Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson, 1834-1872, Vol II. • Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson
... between the metals! The newcomer has but a theoretical knowledge at best of all these animals; and he is intensely interested in identifying the various species. The hartebeeste and the wildebeeste he learns quickly enough, and of course the zebra and the giraffe are unmistakable; but the smaller gazelles are legitimate subjects for discussion. The wonder of the extraordinary abundance of these wild animals mounts as the hours slip by. At the stops for water or for orders the passengers gather from their different compartments to detail excitedly ...
— African Camp Fires • Stewart Edward White
... you get very tired of one of the pictures in your scrapbook. A good way to make it fresh and interesting again is to introduce new people or things. You will easily find among your store of loose pictures a horse and cart, or a dog, or a man, or a giraffe, which, when cut out, will fit in amusingly somewhere in the old picture. If you like, a whole book can be altered reasonably in this way, ...
— What Shall We Do Now?: Five Hundred Games and Pastimes • Dorothy Canfield Fisher
... of Mivart's objection to the theory of production of the long neck of the giraffe (suggested in my first Essay), and which C. Wright seems to admit, while his "watch-tower" theory seems to me more difficult and unlikely as a means of origin. The argument, "Why haven't other allied animals ...
— Alfred Russel Wallace: Letters and Reminiscences, Vol. 1 (of 2) • James Marchant
... Grays trooped in. The Stars ran out, except Gilbat, who ambled like a giraffe. The hum of conversation in the grand stand quickened for a moment with the scraping of chairs, and then grew quiet. The bleachers sent up the rollicking cry of expectancy. The umpire threw out a white ball with his stentorian "Play!" and ...
— The Redheaded Outfield and Other Baseball Stories • Zane Grey
... herd of giraffe two days later, but so far off as to be beyond pursuit; but before evening, just as they were about to camp by some pools, ...
— The Pools of Silence • H. de Vere Stacpoole
... which, because they have not as yet proved of economic value, are on account of their size and their attractiveness to sportsmen in danger of extinction, we may note the various species of rhinoceros, the giraffe, and the several African forms which are akin to the horse. None of these forms have been turned to use, none of them appear likely to be adopted by man for the service they can do; but they are, in common with all the host which cannot be mentioned ...
— Domesticated Animals - Their Relation to Man and to his Advancement in Civilization • Nathaniel Southgate Shaler
... certainty whether it will be more conducive to his happiness to sing, "Croppies Lie Down," or "The Battle of Ross." As for Billy Crow, long life to him! you might as well attempt to pass a turkey upon M. Audubon for a giraffe, as endeavor to impose a Papist upon him for a true follower of King William. He could have given you more generic distinctions to guide you in the decision than ever did Cuvier to designate an antediluvian mammoth; ...
— Charles O'Malley, The Irish Dragoon, Volume 1 (of 2) • Charles Lever
... in the way of sanitation, and yet more as to the advisability of a daily bath, for while even in hotels they give one an enormous carafe, which might be called a giraffe, its neck is so long, filled with drinking water surrounded by endless tumblers, the basin is scarcely bigger than a sugar bowl, while the jug is about the size of ...
— Through Finland in Carts • Ethel Brilliana Alec-Tweedie
... great variety and large size of many of the vertebrate fossil remains which they have yielded. In these beds to the north of the Salt Range there have been found remains of Dinotherium, forms related to the ancestors of the giraffe and various other mammals, some of them, like the Sivatherium, Mastodon, and Stegodon, being animals of great size. On the northern side of the Salt Range three fairly well-defined divisions of the Siwalik series have been recognised, each being conspicuously fossiliferous—a feature that is comparatively ...
— The Panjab, North-West Frontier Province, and Kashmir • Sir James McCrone Douie
... there is room for in the economy of nature." It presupposes that the vast majority of forms that survive accidental destruction, succumb in the second struggle for life in which the determining factor is some slight individual variation, e.g., a little longer neck in the case of the giraffe, or a wing shorter than usual in the case of an insect on an island. The whole theory of struggle, as formulated by Darwin, is, therefore, a violent assumption. Men of science now recognize that "egoism ...
— At the Deathbed of Darwinism - A Series of Papers • Eberhard Dennert
... antelopes, giraffes, deer, chevrotains,[10] llamas, and camels. All these, from their practice of "chewing the cud," are called "ruminants," and they are multitudinous in kinds. The great plains of Southern Africa are the special home of most kinds of antelope, and the giraffe is exclusively African. Deer have their head-quarters in Asia, though they exist in South America as well as throughout ...
— The Contemporary Review, Volume 36, September 1879 • Various
... been {32} the main cause of Lamarck's views soon being lost sight of. They nowhere found a support in facts; the force of habit played in them an exaggerated and unnatural role; the different illustrations of them—such as the long neck of the giraffe explained by the permanent and inherited habit of browsing on the branches of high trees, or the web on the toes of frogs, swimming-birds, etc., explained by the habit of swimming—were talked about and laughed at more as ...
— The Theories of Darwin and Their Relation to Philosophy, Religion, and Morality • Rudolf Schmid
... more strange than the giraffe, You conjure up to view, The flue-box and the forking-calf, Unknown at any Zoo; And new vocations you unfold, Wonder on wonder heaping, Hell-banging for the ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, Aug 15, 1917 • Various
... the camel stem appeared in North America. In the Pliocene arose a llama with the long neck and limbs of a giraffe, whose food was cropped from the leaves and branches of trees. Far more generalized in structure was the Oreodon, an animal related to the camels, but with distinct affinities also with other lines, such as those of the hog ...
— The Elements of Geology • William Harmon Norton
... Giddiness kapturno. Giddy, to make kapturnigi. Gift donaco. Gift, to make a donaci. Gifted talenta. Gild orumi. Gill (fish) branko. Gilliflower levkojo. Gimlet borileto. Gin gxino. Ginger zingibro. Gingerbread mielkuko. Gipsy nomadulo. Giraffe gxirafo. Gird zoni. Girdle zono. Girl knabino. Give doni. Give back redoni. Give up forlasi. Give evidence atesti. Give notice sciigi. Glacier glaciejo. Glad gxoja. Gladden gxojigi. Glade maldensejo. Gladiator gladiatoro. Glance ...
— English-Esperanto Dictionary • John Charles O'Connor and Charles Frederic Hayes
... not been produced or increased by the volition of those animals; but among the different varieties which occurred in the earlier and less highly organized forms of these groups, those always survived longest which had the greatest facilities for seizing their prey. Neither did the giraffe acquire its long neck by desiring to reach the foliage of the more lofty shrubs, and constantly stretching its neck for the purpose, but because any varieties which occurred among its antitypes with a longer neck than usual at once secured a fresh ...
— Contributions to the Theory of Natural Selection - A Series of Essays • Alfred Russel Wallace
... alligators, catch the wild goats by the beard; Whistle to the cockatoos, and mock the hairy-faced baboon; Worship mighty Mumbo Jumbo in the mountains of the moon. I myself, in far Timbuctoo, leopard's blood shall daily quaff; Ride a tiger hunting, mounted on a thoroughbred giraffe." ...
— The Daisy Chain, or Aspirations • Charlotte Yonge
... guests to the bear pits, and to their delight, they saw the great polar bear, the black bear and many others of which they had seen illustrations, and after watching them as much time as they could spare they passed on to see the giraffe, and from thence to the pen of the zebra. They were earnestly engaged in counting its beautiful stripes when from a great tent near they heard the sound of some wild and warlike instrument which seemed to serve as a summons, ...
— Pixy's Holiday Journey • George Lang
... and as a ring is the sign of marriage by which two are made one, so the Old Man would have himself and the King to be one." Other gifts there were, an elephant of crystal, very cunningly wrought, and a monster which they call a giraffe, also of crystal, and draughts and chessmen, all finely made. The King, on his part, sent to the Old Man a great store of newels, and scarlet cloth, and dishes of gold and bridles ...
— Heroes Every Child Should Know • Hamilton Wright Mabie
... world, and have been known to carry tusks exceeding 500 lb. the pair in weight. The principal wild animals besides these are the lion, leopard, hyena, fox, pig, Cape buffalo, gnu, kudu, hartebeest, pallah, steinboc, and the little madoka, or Saltiana gazelle. The giraffe, zebra, rhinoceros, and hippopotamus are all common. The game-birds are the bustard, florikan, guinea-fowl, partridge, quail, snipe, various geese and ducks, and a very dark-coloured rock-pigeon or sand-grouse. The birds in general have very tame plumage, ...
— What Led To The Discovery of the Source Of The Nile • John Hanning Speke
... Beatrix Potter Lions and Tigers, Anonymous Apes and Monkeys, Anonymous The Hippopotamus and the Rhinoceros, Anonymous The Giraffe, Anonymous Parrots, Anonymous Rab and His Friends, John Brown, M.D. A Ride With a Mad Horse in a Freight-Car, W. H. H. Murray A-Hunting of the Deer, Charles ...
— The Junior Classics Volume 8 - Animal and Nature Stories • Selected and arranged by William Patten
... cast off moorings and sailed away to Poplar, and had taken with it its haunting smell, as well as that pleasant sense of disorder that the best conducted Ark is always able to impart. The sliding roof had rarely been known to close entirely. There was always a pair of giraffe-legs sticking out, or an elephant-trunk, taking from the stiffness of its outline, and reminding us that our motley crowd of friends inside were uncomfortably cramped for room and only too ready to leap in a cascade on the floor and ...
— Dream Days • Kenneth Grahame
... my life I've wanted to run a store," she admitted. "I like the confusement." Every morning she came across the prairie sitting straight as a board in the old buggy behind a spotted horse that held his head high and his neck stretched like a giraffe. The few dollars she got for helping in the store eked out Pa's small pension, which had been their ...
— Land of the Burnt Thigh • Edith Eudora Kohl
... sanctuary; and he declared that he should take the boss who had been so kind to his boys, and both the young bosses, to a wild place where they would find game in abundance, and where the forests held the great rhinoceros, plenty of elephants, and amongst whose open glades the tall giraffe browse the leafage of the high trees. There in the plains were herds of buffalo too numerous to count, quagga, zebra, gnu, eland, and bok of all kinds. There was a great river there, he said, full of fish, and with great ...
— Off to the Wilds - Being the Adventures of Two Brothers • George Manville Fenn
... stupid sailors picking oakum. The other side of the globe is but the home of our correspondent. Our voyaging is only great-circle sailing, and the doctors prescribe for diseases of the skin merely. One hastens to southern Africa to chase the giraffe; but surely that is not the game he would be after. How long, pray, would a man hunt giraffes if he could? Snipes and woodcocks also may afford rare sport; but I trust it would be nobler game ...
— Walden, and On The Duty Of Civil Disobedience • Henry David Thoreau
... all beasts, and can do everything save read, write, and cast accounts." People would surely have said, "Nonsense; your elephant is contrary to nature"; and have thought you were telling stories—as the French thought of Le Vaillant when he came back to Paris and said that he had shot a giraffe; and as the king of the Cannibal Islands thought of the English sailor, when he said that in his country water turned to marble, and rain fell as feathers. They would tell you, the more they knew of science, ...
— The Water-Babies - A Fairy Tale for a Land-Baby • Charles Kingsley
... female beauty were almost as eccentric as those of Cruikshank. A couple of beauties of the Meadows type will be found at page 3 of Henry Cockton's "Sisters" (Nodes, 1844), where one lady is represented to us with a neck like that of a giraffe, whilst her sister beauty is sensibly inconvenienced by a lock of hair which has strayed into her eye,—a favourite device, by the way, of the artist. This book, now scarce (in the illustration of which he was assisted by Alfred Crowquill), is adorned with a portrait on steel, after a painting ...
— English Caricaturists and Graphic Humourists of the Nineteenth Century. - How they Illustrated and Interpreted their Times. • Graham Everitt
... among the uncivilised, and independently of the special circumstances of life. It is even found among animals also, and is said to be notably obvious in giraffes. It will hardly be argued that the female giraffe leads a more confined and domestic life ...
— Essays in War-Time - Further Studies In The Task Of Social Hygiene • Havelock Ellis
... distinct and secret advantage from this intellectual connection. She received her mixed and decorous guests with a kind of tall, ponderous grace, peculiarly her own and which awakened in the mind of intimidated strangers incongruous and improper reminiscences of an elephant, a giraffe, a gazelle; of a gothic tower—of an overgrown angel. Her Thursdays were becoming famous in their world; and their world grew steadily, annexing street after street. It included also Somebody's Gardens, a Crescent—a couple ...
— Tales of Unrest • Joseph Conrad
... middle ages; as 'alcohol', 'alembic', 'alkali', 'elixir'. Add to these the names of animals, plants, fruits, or articles of merchandize first introduced by them to the notice of Western Europe; as 'amber', 'artichoke', 'barragan', 'camphor', 'coffee', 'cotton', 'crimson', 'gazelle', 'giraffe', 'jar', 'jasmin', 'lake' (lacca), 'lemon', 'lime', 'lute', 'mattress', 'mummy', 'saffron', 'sherbet', 'shrub', 'sofa', 'sugar', 'syrup', 'tamarind'; and some further terms, 'admiral', 'amulet', 'arsenal', 'assassin', ...
— English Past and Present • Richard Chenevix Trench
... large division comprises arguments from example. That is, if a truth be asserted of an individual, it can therefore be predicated of the class to which the individual belongs. For instance, if the first time a person saw a giraffe, he observed that it was eating grass, he would be justified in saying that giraffes are herbivorous. All gold is yellow, heavy, and not corroded by acid, though no one has tested it all. However, every giraffe does not have one ear brown and the other gray because the first one seen happened ...
— English: Composition and Literature • W. F. (William Franklin) Webster
... She looks at you as if you were a giraffe or something and she would like to take a pot ...
— The Girl on the Boat • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse
... other scientists. But it was confidently expected by his Zoological confreres that his voyage of exploration would add largely to our knowledge of the habits and customs of the fauna of Africa, and notably of the giraffe, as coming, by the exceptional development of its neck, within closest range of his vision as he flew through the ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, March 10th, 1920 • Various
... ancestors, and to those in which allied forms lived, the change of structure being due to the effect of the conditions of life and of the actions of the organs. He did not specially consider the differences of closely allied species, but the peculiarities of marked types such as the long neck of the giraffe, the antlers of stags, the trunk of the elephant, and so on; but he considered that the action of external conditions was the true cause of evolution, and assumed that in course of time the ...
— Hormones and Heredity • J. T. Cunningham
... Alps, and the forest which clustered on their ramparts a growth no more considerable than our Scottish heath. Again the cliff yawned, but now with a deeper entry; and the Casco, hauling her wind, began to slide into the bay of Anaho. The cocoa-palm, that giraffe of vegetables, so graceful, so ungainly, to the European eye so foreign, was to be seen crowding on the beach, and climbing and fringing the steep sides of mountains. Rude and bare hills embraced the inlet upon either hand; ...
— In the South Seas • Robert Louis Stevenson
... Athens, MM. Wagner and Roth have described a deposit in which they found the remains of the genera Mastodon, Dinotherium, Hipparion, two species of Giraffe, Antelope, and others, some living and some extinct. With them were also associated fossil bones of the Semnopithecus, showing that here, as in the south of France, the quadrumana were characteristic of this period. The whole fauna attests the former extension ...
— The Student's Elements of Geology • Sir Charles Lyell
... beasts and fishes, and indeed of all the animated world around us; how marvellously are these names adapted often to bring out the most striking and characteristic features of the objects to which they are given. Thus when the Romans became acquainted with the stately giraffe, long concealed from them in the interior deserts of Africa, (which we learn from Pliny they first did in the shows exhibited by Julius Caesar,) it was happily imagined to designate a creature combining, though with infinitely more grace, something of the height and even ...
— On the Study of Words • Richard C Trench
... that the arm and hand of a monkey, the foreleg and foot of a dog and of a horse, the wing of a bat, and the fin of a porpoise, are fundamentally identical; that the long neck of the giraffe has the same and no more bones than the short one of the elephant; that the eggs of Surinam frogs hatch into tadpoles with as good tails for swimming as any of their kindred, although as tadpoles they never enter the water; that the Guinea-pig is furnished ...
— Darwiniana - Essays and Reviews Pertaining to Darwinism • Asa Gray
... should think so, my little Wenceslas!" cried Valerie, calling the artist to her, taking his face in her hands, and kissing his forehead. "A poor boy with no fortune, and no one to depend on! Cast off by a carrotty giraffe! What do you expect, Crevel? Wenceslas is my poet, and I love him as if he were my own child, and make no secret of it. Bah! your virtuous women see evil everywhere and in everything. Bless me, could they not sit by a man without doing wrong? I am a spoilt child ...
— Cousin Betty • Honore de Balzac
... Giraffe, and she belonged to a tribe which boasted of the fact that they were the tallest of all animals. But they were not aggressive about it at all, for giraffes are the most modest and gentle creatures to be found ...
— Rataplan • Ellen Velvin
... their fezzes cocked jauntily, impatiently shuffled their sandals of giraffe hide, and hitched up their belts in which were thrust ...
— Sacrifice • Stephen French Whitman
... ahead, and who had an express loaded with solid ball in his hand, could not resist temptation. Lifting his gun, he let drive at the last, a young cow. By some extraordinary chance the ball struck it full on the back of the neck, shattering the spinal column, and that giraffe went rolling head over heels just like a rabbit. I never ...
— King Solomon's Mines • H. Rider Haggard
... the curious fly-trap in Dionoea. Whatever may be its benefit to the plant, till the whole apparatus as it now is, was complete, it would have been of no use. In the animal kingdom also, instances might be given: the giraffe has a long neck which is an advantage in getting food that other animals cannot reach; but what would have been the use of a neck which was becoming—and had not yet become—long? here intermediate stages would not have been useful, and therefore ...
— Creation and Its Records • B.H. Baden-Powell
... remains of a gold epergne, which represents men and monkeys engaged in gathering the fruit of a group of dom-palms. Two individuals lead each a tame giraffe by the halter, others kneeling on the rim raise their hands to implore mercy from an unseen enemy, while negro prisoners, grovelling on their stomachs, painfully attempt to raise their head and shoulders from the ground. This, doubtless, represents a ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 4 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... The King's Giraffe died on Sunday week, at the Menagerie at Sandpit-gate, near Windsor. It was nearly four years and a half old, and arrived in England in August, 1827, as a present from the Pacha of Egypt to ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 14, No. 395, Saturday, October 24, 1829. • Various
... country school. Since then he has grown to manhood without our assistance. He went away undersized, pale, with a meager little neck and a sort of wistful Nicholas Nickelby expression. When he returned at the Christmas vacation he had gained ten pounds, was brown and freckled, and looked like a small giraffe ...
— The "Goldfish" • Arthur Train
... "seems to attribute all the beautiful adaptations in nature, such as the long neck of the giraffe for browsing on the branches of trees," to the effects of habit. Mr. Darwin should not say that Lamarck "seems" to do this. It was his business to tell us what led Lamarck to his conclusions, not what "seemed" ...
— Luck or Cunning? • Samuel Butler
... and the hippopotami; the latter contains the camels, llamas, deerlets, oxen, antelope, and deer. In the Artiodactyla the toes are even on all feet, being normally four (perfect and rudimentary) with the exception of the camel, giraffe and a few antelope, in which two only are present. To understand the subject thoroughly one must compare the fore-foot of a deer or pig with our own hand; what we call the knee of the former is merely our wrist. The bones which ...
— Natural History of the Mammalia of India and Ceylon • Robert A. Sterndale
... Mak uttered an exclamation, and pointed towards a particular spot in the plain before us, where, close by a clump of trees, we saw the graceful head and neck and part of the shoulders of a giraffe. We were naturally much excited at the sight, this being the first we ...
— The Gorilla Hunters • R.M. Ballantyne
... N. Ticeum and B. Phoolum's 'Great Moral Show,' with 'six tigers, five elephants, a giraffe, hippopotamus, kangaroo, in-nu-mer-a-ble monkeys, wild men of Borneo, living skeleton, educated bull, and a ship of the desert,' would come to a mean little village like this? Skowhegan's the town it's going to move through, and it ...
— Harper's Young People, July 13, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... of large quadrupeds in Africa, some of which are native to no other country. Besides the three members of the zebra family, there is the harmless, shy giraffe, with its beautiful spotted body, its long, slender neck, and its delicate head, which it carries fifteen feet or more from the ground. This graceful animal is also hunted by the natives for its soft skin and its delicate flesh, which ...
— Harper's Young People, August 31, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... striatum), or, in the language of hunters, "moose-wood." He peels off the bark from old trees of this sort, and feeds upon it, as well as upon several species of mosses with which the arctic regions abound. It will be seen that in these respects he resembles the giraffe: he may be regarded as the giraffe ...
— The Hunters' Feast - Conversations Around the Camp Fire • Mayne Reid
... and freedom and wildness, and in plains standing empty to the sun, the wind, and the rain. The country bore some resemblance to the country west of Redjaf on the White Nile, the home of the giant eland; only here there was no big game, no chance of seeing the towering form of the giraffe, the black bulk of elephant or buffalo, the herds of straw-colored hartebeests, or the ghostly shimmer of the sun glinting on the coats of roan and eland as they vanished silently in the gray sea of ...
— Through the Brazilian Wilderness • Theodore Roosevelt
... and seclusion; and when we see majesty itself, after making the experiment of yachts and frigates, quietly and comfortably return to its palace on board a steamer, we may be the less surprised at finding the Marquis of Londonderry and his family making their way across the Channel in the steamer Giraffe. Yet it is to be remarked, that though nothing can be more miscellaneous than the passengers, consisting of Englishmen, Frenchmen, Germans, and Yankee; of Jews, Turks, and heretics; of tourists, physicians, smugglers, and all the other ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 327 - Vol. 53, January, 1843 • Various
... subterranean fish, you have eyes and dont want to see, you will lose your eyes. If you like eating the tender tops of trees enough to make you concentrate all your energies on the stretching of your neck, you will finally get a long neck, like the giraffe. This seems absurd to inconsiderate people at the first blush; but it is within the personal experience of all of us that it is just by this process that a child tumbling about the floor becomes a boy walking erect; ...
— Back to Methuselah • George Bernard Shaw
... up, played with for years, and later measured my intellectual powers with, but, as they became a novelty, there was new zest in occasionally seeing them. After I had been there a short time, I heard a call one day: "Heads out!" I ran with the rest and exclaimed, "What is it?" expecting to see a giraffe or some other wonder from Barnum's Museum. "Why, don't you see those boys?" said one. "Oh," I replied, "is that all? I have seen boys all my life." When visiting family friends in the city, we were in the way of making the acquaintance of their sons, and as all social relations were strictly ...
— Eighty Years And More; Reminiscences 1815-1897 • Elizabeth Cady Stanton
... of strangely mixed characteristics, for it has the feet of a Giraffe, the glands of a goat, the coat of a Deer, the horns of an ox and Deer combined, the eyes of a Gazelle, the build of an Antelope, and—the speed of the wind. It is the swiftest four-footed creature native to the plains, and so far as known there is nothing but a blooded race horse that can ...
— Wild Animals at Home • Ernest Thompson Seton
... the effects of use and disuse are transmitted to offspring. So, too, thought Lamarck, who half a century before Darwin propounded a theory of the origin of species that was equally evolutionary in its way. Why does the giraffe have so long a neck? Lamarck thought it was because the giraffe had acquired a habit of stretching his neck out. Every time there was a bad season, the giraffes must all stretch up as high as ever they could towards the leafy tops of the trees; and the one ...
— Anthropology • Robert Marett
... Caviidae also have two sharp, horny saws at the side of the penis. The cat, the rhinoceros, the tapir, and other animals possess projecting structures on the penis, and some species of ruminants, such as the sheep, the giraffe, and many antelopes, have, attached to the penis, long filiform processes through which the urethra passes. (F.H.A. Marshall, The Physiology ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 3 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... was standing in a grove of mokhala trees. These, unlike the humbler mimosas, have tall naked stems, with heads of thick foliage, in form resembling an umbrella or parasol. Their pinnate leaves of delicate green are the favourite food of the giraffe, hence their botanical appellation of Acacia giraffae; and hence also their common name among the Dutch hunters of ...
— Popular Adventure Tales • Mayne Reid
... the callow and awkward ways of a young giraffe, but, though only a three-year-old, he was sedate as an old maid and had the dignity of a churchwarden. His behaviour was an example to ...
— Boy Woodburn - A Story of the Sussex Downs • Alfred Ollivant
... comprehended which neighbour one another without presenting points of any very profound dissimilarity? We have only a few isolated species, such as man, which form at once the species and the whole genus; the elephant, the rhinoceros, the hippopotamus, and the giraffe form genera, or simple species, which go down in a single line, with no collateral branches. All other races appear to form families, in which we may perceive a common source or stock from which the different branches seem to have sprung in greater ...
— Evolution, Old & New - Or, the Theories of Buffon, Dr. Erasmus Darwin and Lamarck, - as compared with that of Charles Darwin • Samuel Butler
... savage sarcasm, the lava of a volcanic spirit. In a fine prophetic strain is that vision of Amy's feelings as the inebriated nawab stumbles hazily into the drawing-room, steaming fulsomely of chilma! And that picture of the African jungle, with Smifzer in puris mounted on a high-trotting giraffe, with his twelve dusky brides around him,—Cruikshank alone could do it justice. But the triumph of the poem is in the high-toned sentiment of civilisation and moral duty, which, esteeming 'the grey barbarian' lower than the 'Christian ...
— The Bon Gaultier Ballads • William Edmonstoune Aytoun
... breeze; the clowns, the tumblers, the strong men, and the riders flying about in the air as if the laws of gravitation no longer existed. But, best of all, was the grand conglomeration of animals where the giraffe appears to stand on the elephant's back, the zebra to be jumping over the seal, the hippopotamus to be lunching off a couple of crocodiles, and lions and tigers to be raining down in all directions with their mouths ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. 5, May, 1878, No. 7. - Scribner's Illustrated • Various
... of the ancient Jews, has by different authors been described as the camelopard or giraffe. The Syriac version renders the original term into one which signifies the mountain-goat, and so far coincides with our common translation of the Scriptures, though it is extremely doubtful whether the chamois or the ibex was to be found in any district of Palestine. Dr. Shaw holds the opinion ...
— Palestine or the Holy Land - From the Earliest Period to the Present Time • Michael Russell |
