"Giraffe" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... people for the qualities they have not got. Praise may be gigantic and insane without having any quality of flattery so long as it is praise of something that is noticeably in existence. A man may say that a giraffe's head strikes the stars, or that a whale fills the German Ocean, and still be only in a rather excited state about a favourite animal. But when he begins to congratulate the giraffe on his feathers, and the whale on the elegance of his legs, we find ourselves confronted ...
— Heretics • Gilbert K. Chesterton
... committee, when I started in on Bob 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 him say that in a corcus, when he went bumming ...
— The Grocery Man And Peck's Bad Boy - Peck's Bad Boy and His Pa, No. 2 - 1883 • George W. Peck
... 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 ...
— The Contemporary Review, Volume 36, September 1879 • Various
... him? In the watches of the night, when the keepers are asleep, when the birds are on one leg, when even the little armadillo is quiet, and the monkeys have ceased their chatter, he — I mean the hippopotamus — and the elephant, and the long-necked giraffe, perhaps may lay their heads together and have a colloquy about the great silent antediluvian world which they remember, where mighty monsters floundered through the ooze, crocodiles basked on the banks, and dragons darted out of the caves and waters before men were ...
— Some Roundabout Papers • W. M. Thackeray
... 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 through ...
— Falling in Love - With Other Essays on More Exact Branches of Science • Grant Allen
... 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. ...
— The Little Warrior - (U.K. Title: Jill the Reckless) • P. G. Wodehouse
... assembly; and Indra's longing was so intense that his body became all eyes. In this myth may be seen exemplified the effect of Desire and Will in the forms of life, function and shape—all following Desire and Need, as in the case of the long neck of the giraffe which enables him to reach for the high branches of the trees in his native land; and in the long neck and high legs of the fisher birds, the ...
— A Series of Lessons in Gnani Yoga • Yogi Ramacharaka
... will vary from over 100 deg.F. to below freezing-point in 24 hours. There are a number of definite caravan routes connecting Timbuctoo and the Central Soudan with the Niger and coast-lands. Dates and salt are the chief products; the giraffe, wild ass, lion, ostrich, python, &c., are found; it is chiefly inhabited by nomadic and often warlike Moors, Arabs, Berbers, and various negro races. The greater part is within the sphere of French influence. "When the winds waken, and lift and winnow ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... or zomer 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 ...
— Palestine or the Holy Land - From the Earliest Period to the Present Time • Michael Russell
... 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 ...
— English: Composition and Literature • W. F. (William Franklin) Webster
... "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 of ...
— The Hunters' Feast - Conversations Around the Camp Fire • Mayne Reid
... decide your mother's not fit to take care of you. Anyone who can even imagine such silly ridiculous things as she's just said must be looked after. You MAY take a notion, Mrs. Mumpson, that I'm a murderer or a giraffe. It would be just as sensible as ...
— He Fell in Love with His Wife • Edward P. Roe
... considered to be the largest of his species in Europe. Near the entrance, on the right, is the museum of natural curiosities, the collection of which is very valuable, and admirably arranged. There is here a fine giraffe, or camelopard, of an amazing height, stuffed. This surprising animal is a native of Ethiopia, and some other parts of Africa, and has scarcely ever ...
— The Stranger in France • John Carr
... which, by means of artfully contrived mechanism, the movements of the heavenly bodies were 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 have been preserved, while his chancellor, ...
— Historical Tales, Vol 5 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality, German • Charles Morris
... be regarded as essentially a disease of cattle, hogs would seem to be as easy a prey. Almost in the same grade of receptivity are sheep and goats. Next in order of susceptibility come the buffalo, American bison, camel, chamois, llama, giraffe, and antelope. Horses, dogs, cats, and even poultry may occasionally become infected with the disease, the last three being particularly dangerous as carriers of the contagion. Man himself is not immune, and the frequency of his infection by coming in contact with diseased animals ...
— Special Report on Diseases of Cattle • U.S. Department of Agriculture
... the blunder of clumping the two cycles of causation into one. What preserves an animal with his peculiarity, if it be a useful one, they saw to be the nature of the environment to which the peculiarity was adjusted. The giraffe with his peculiar neck is preserved by the fact that there are in his environment tall trees whose leaves he can digest. But these philosophers went further, and said that the presence of the trees not only maintained ...
— The Will to Believe - and Other Essays in Popular Philosophy • William James
... selectionists' theory, chance gave the bird its wings, the fish its fins, the porcupine its quills, the skunk its fetid secretion, the cuttlefish its ink, the swordfish its sword, the electric eel its powerful battery; it gave the giraffe its long neck, the camel its hump, the horse its hoof, the ruminants their horns and double stomach, and so on. According to Weismann, it gave us our eyes, our ears, our hands with the fingers and opposing thumb, ...
— The Last Harvest • John Burroughs
... muscles, blood-vessels, nerves, composing the fore-part of the body, which would be required to make an increment of size in such horns advantageous. Here let me take another instance—that of the giraffe: an instance which I take partly because, in the sixth edition of the Origin of Species, issued in 1872, Mr. Darwin has referred to this animal when effectually disposing of certain arguments urged against his hypothesis. ...
— Essays: Scientific, Political, & Speculative, Vol. I • Herbert Spencer
... the hawk and the hummingbird, the spider and the honey bee, the turkey gobbler and the mocking-bird, the butterfly and the eagle, the ostrich and the wren, the tree toad and the elephant, the giraffe and the kangaroo, the wolf and the lamb should all be the descendants of a common ancestor? Yet these and all other creatures must be blood relatives if man is next of kin ...
— In His Image • William Jennings Bryan
... of game mammals found are as follows: Elephant, rhinoceros, hippopotamus, giraffe, buffalo, zebra, sable and roan antelope, kudu, water buck, blue wilde-beest, impalla, reed buck, bush-buck, steenbok, duiker, klipspringer, mountain reed ...
— Supplement to Animal Sanctuaries in Labrador • William Wood
... pretty name,' snarled Slivers, prodding the ground with his wooden leg, as he always did when angry. 'Neither are you. What do you mean by banging into my office like an insane giraffe?'—this in allusion ...
— Madame Midas • Fergus Hume
... differ too widely from one another, so we cannot get our idea of-we will say a horse-to conjure up to our minds the idea of any animal more unlike a horse than a pony is; nor can we get a well-defined idea of a combination between a horse and any animal more remote from it than an ass, zebra, or giraffe. We may, indeed, make a statue of a flying horse, but the idea is one which cannot be made plausible to any but ignorant people. So "human flesh" may vary a little from "human flesh" without undue ...
— God the Known and God the Unknown • Samuel Butler
... species, . . . but the view here developed tenders such an hypothesis quite unnecessary. . . . The powerful retractile talons of the falcon and the cat tribes have not been produced or increased by the volition of those animals, 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 this purpose, but because any varieties which occurred among its antitypes with a longer ...
— Unconscious Memory • Samuel Butler
... 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
... 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 ...
— African Camp Fires • Stewart Edward White
... deforestation; desertification; wildlife populations (such as elephant, hippopotamus, giraffe, and lion) threatened because ...
— The 2008 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... all'—I beg ten thousand pardons, my dear madam; you know the quotation! Well," he added, his face changing suddenly as he turned to Mrs. Merryweather and spoke in a lower tone, "fortunate old fellow, eh? to have one young face—two, perhaps, for my Giraffe loves me too—brighten when one comes. Ah! you, with all your wealth—richest woman of my acquaintance, give you my honor!—cannot tell what these boys mean to me. Hilda, too: most astonishing how I miss that child! ...
— The Merryweathers • Laura E. Richards
... the 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 ...
— Under the Lilacs • Louisa May Alcott
... deficiency seems to have 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 curiosities than as worthy ...
— The Theories of Darwin and Their Relation to Philosophy, Religion, and Morality • Rudolf Schmid
... 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
... 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
... Cuttle-fishes of our seas, though so hideous as to resemble a bad dream, are too small to be formidable; but off the Newfoundland coast is a species with arms sometimes 30 feet long, so as to be 60 feet from tip to tip. The body, however, is small in proportion. The Giraffe attains a height of over 20 feet; the Elephant, though not so tall, is more bulky; the Crocodile reaches a length of over 20 feet, the Python of 60 feet, the extinct Titanosaurus of the American Jurassic beds, the largest land animal yet known to us, 100 ...
— The Beauties of Nature - and the Wonders of the World We Live In • Sir John Lubbock
... especially shows African animals, such as the giraffe and the different kinds of antelopes, mixed with Arabian mottoes; and the patterns are generally woven with gold. This is merely gilt parchment, the silk being ...
— Needlework As Art • Marian Alford
... return pushed her about with great violence. But it was manifest to Mr. Bartlett that, had not the bull shewn dignified forbearance, he could easily have killed her by a single lateral thrust with his immense horns. The giraffe uses his short, hair-covered horns, which are rather longer in the male than in the female, in a curious manner; for, with his long neck, he swings his head to either side, almost upside down, with such force that I have seen a hard ...
— The Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex • Charles Darwin
... his head, he trod on his trunk; An over-sensitive she-Gorilla Declared that the shock would surely kill her; A frisky, gay and frolicsome Ape Tied up his tail with a yard of crape; The Donkey wiped his eyes with his ears; The Crocodile shed a bucket of tears; The Rhinoceros gored a young Giraffe Who had the very bad taste to laugh; The Hippopotamus puffed and blew, To show his respect for the Kangaroo; And a sad but indignant Chimpanzee Gnawed all ...
— St. Nicholas, Vol. 5, No. 5, March, 1878 • Various
... Is that 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 you'll do ...
— Uncle William - The Man Who Was Shif'less • Jennette Lee
... he 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 ...
— Love's Shadow • Ada Leverson
... 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
... because his pumpkins had taken first prize, and Davy's only second. On the other hand, Keturah, his cow, had taken only third; but old Sandy McKitterick had said that Spectacle John was judge, and that he didn't know a cow from a giraffe. And Isaac and Rebekah had taken first, anyhow, and the doctor must come and see the red tickets on them. Gilbert started off through the crowd, but fell a captive by the way. As he passed a Gaelic-speaking group of checked ...
— Treasure Valley • Marian Keith
... first. The crowd was surging out and the place nearly empty before they found their tongues. And then there was so much else to see. The various stuffed animals, the giraffe with his three-story neck, the mermaid, the wax figures, the birds and beasts and serpents, and a model of Paris, of London, and of Jerusalem. The place looked quite gorgeous all ...
— A Little Girl in Old New York • Amanda Millie Douglas
... be humored along. But a fat man with a grouch is inexcusable in any company—there is so much of him to be grouchy. He constitutes a wave of discontent and a period of general depression. He is not expected to be romantic and sentimental either. It is all right for a giraffe to be sentimental, but not a hippopotamus. If you doubt me consult any set of natural history pictures. The giraffe is shown with his long and sinuous neck entwined in fond embrace about the neck of his mate; but the amphibious, blood-sweating hippo is depicted as spouting and wallowing, morose and ...
— Cobb's Anatomy • Irvin S. Cobb
... top and 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
... back, and tried our best to see the procession; but the floor was pretty much on a level, and, though I stood on tiptoe, all that I could see was, now and then, the head of an eagle, or a bear, or a giraffe, rising above the crowd, while the music rang out in thunders of sweet sounds, and the people swarmed in and out of the little square pews in the galleries, like bees hiving ...
— Phemie Frost's Experiences • Ann S. Stephens
... near 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 of a vast ...
— The Student's Elements of Geology • Sir Charles Lyell
... front of this was a recitation-bench capable of seating fifteen or twenty pupils. A pair of globes, tattooed with dragons and winged horses, occupied a shelf between two windows, which were so high from the floor that nothing but a giraffe could have looked ...
— The Story of a Bad Boy • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... height, altitude, elevation; eminence, pitch; loftiness &c adj.; sublimity. tallness &c adj.; stature, procerity^; prominence &c 250. colossus &c (size) 192; giant, grenadier, giraffe, camelopard. mount, mountain; hill alto, butte [U.S.], monticle^, fell, knap^; cape; headland, foreland^; promontory; ridge, hog's back, dune; rising ground, vantage ground; down; moor, moorland; Alp; uplands, highlands; heights &c (summit) 210; knob, loma^, pena [U.S.], picacho^, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... thousand, which was the largest he ever received. In the McCormick reaper patent litigation he was engaged with Edwin M. Stanton, who treated him with discourtesy in the Federal Court at Cincinnati, called him "that giraffe," and prevented him from delivering the argument which he had so carefully and solicitously prepared. Such an experience was, of course, very painful to his sensitive nature, and it shows how great he was that he could forgive the injury entirely as he did later when he appointed ...
— Life of Abraham Lincoln - Little Blue Book Ten Cent Pocket Series No. 324 • John Hugh Bowers
... 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 have you ...
— Dynevor Terrace (Vol. I) - or, The Clue of Life • Charlotte M. Yonge
... "cut" and the huge Jeekie blundered along after him, the paraphernalia with which he was hung about rattling like the hoofs of a galloping giraffe. Nor for all his load did he ever turn a hair. Whether it were fear within or a desire to save his master, or a belief in the virtues of Little Bonsa, or that his foot was, as it were, once more upon his native heath, the fact remained that notwithstanding the fifty years, almost, that had ...
— The Yellow God - An Idol of Africa • H. Rider Haggard
... herr, do you wish to go to bed without your supper, as has been promised you?" said the young man, while the beautiful Reine was trying to recover her countenance. "Now, then, sing us a little song instead of staring at me as if I were a giraffe. Your little cook has a nice voice, Madame Gobillot. Now, then, mein herr, give us a little German lied. I will give you six kreutzers if you sing in tune, and a flogging if you ...
— Gerfaut, Complete • Charles de Bernard
... the glans of the penis is covered with sharp spines. Some of the 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 ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 3 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... giraffe measures about fifteen feet from the top of his head to the ground, but some of them have been known to be over sixteen feet high. Most of this height is owing to their long necks, but their fore-legs ...
— Round-about Rambles in Lands of Fact and Fancy • Frank Richard Stockton
... who said his father could let me have it for a month on trial. Jackson, junior, was anxious to go away without the horse, but I told him to wait a bit while I put on the harness. The animal was of a mouse colour, very tall, something like a giraffe; and by the time I got him between the shafts, I could see that he was possessed by a devil of some kind. It might be a winged one who would fly away with me; so, in order to have a clear course, I led him through the gateway into the middle of the ...
— The Book of the Bush • George Dunderdale
... dynamic. She looks at you as if you were a giraffe or something and she would like to take a pot at you ...
— Three Men and a Maid • P. G. Wodehouse
... circle 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, ...
— Ruggles of Red Gap • Harry Leon Wilson
... 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 ...
— Cousin Betty • Honore de Balzac
... was a clattering of hoofs behind him, and Ribsy came galloping along the road, with nothing on him but his collar. He was holding his big head high in the air, like a giraffe, and gazing proudly about him as he ran. He stopped short when he saw the little boy, and, giving a triumphant whistle, said cheerfully, "How ...
— Davy and The Goblin - What Followed Reading 'Alice's Adventures in Wonderland' • Charles E. Carryl
... He had 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 ...
— Blackwoods Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 366, April, 1846 • Various
... supplies, which placed us in a position to move again immediately. The question now arose as to whether it would be best to remain where we were a few days longer to gain more experience, or to trek at once over the Mau, with a chance at giraffe on the way, and so on into the Sotik country, with its alluring promises of ...
— Stories from Everybody's Magazine • 1910 issues of Everybody's Magazine
... objects to which they are appended, 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 ...
— Practical Taxidermy • Montagu Browne
... either out of the pocket of a man who isn't looking, or out of the envy of the poor neighbour who IS looking, but can't afford the figure. The seats are cheap. Why should A People, fabulous and lofty giraffe, want to charge or pay high prices? If it were THE PEOPLE now.—But it isn't. It isn't Plebs, the proletariat. The seats ...
— Touch and Go • D. H. Lawrence
... one day several months ago. He was conjuring at a concert for an Infantry Battalion that evening—between the forefinger and thumb of the right hand you now perceive a baby giraffe sort of business—and I told him I thought it was very good of him to take the immense amount of trouble he always ...
— No Man's Land • H. C. McNeile
... direct action of the physical conditions of life, something to the crossing of already existing forms, and much to use and disuse, that is, to the effects of habit. To this latter agency he seems to attribute all the beautiful adaptations in nature; such as the long neck of the giraffe for browsing on the branches of trees. But he likewise believed in a law of progressive development, and as all the forms of life thus tend to progress, in order to account for the existence at the present day of simple productions, he maintains that such forms are now spontaneously ...
— On the Origin of Species - 6th Edition • Charles Darwin
... cold, Mary, blinking and nervous, stood pressed close together whilst other little girls stared and giggled, moved forward and then backward again, until suddenly Canon Lasker's Emily, who was fifteen and had such long legs that she was known as "the Giraffe," came up and said: "Isn't it hot! Do you play croquet? Please-do! I'll have—the—blue ball..." And the Coles ...
— Jeremy • Hugh Walpole
... spreads his knees Letting his arms hang down to laugh, The zebra stripes along his jaw Swelling to maculate giraffe. ...
— Poems • T. S. [Thomas Stearns] Eliot
... finest sight to see Was Leo's Giraffe Cavalry; As down the battle plain they tore, The Rebels saw that all ...
— The Animals' Rebellion • Clifton Bingham
... 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
... be bold creative artists, and care for no laws or limits. But it is impossible to be an artist and not care for laws and limits. Art is limitation; the essence of every picture is the frame. If you draw a giraffe, you must draw him with a long neck. If, in your bold creative way, you hold yourself free to draw a giraffe with a short neck, you will really find that you are not free to draw a giraffe. The moment you step into the world of facts, ...
— Orthodoxy • G. K. Chesterton
... 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 ...
— Billy Whiskers - The Autobiography of a Goat • Frances Trego Montgomery
... considerable 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; so that no sooner had he seated ...
— Charles O'Malley, The Irish Dragoon, Volume 1 (of 2) • Charles Lever
... by which exercise new developments of organs took place, ending in variations sufficient to constitute new species. In this way the swiftness of the antelope, the claws and teeth of the lion, the trunk of the elephant, the long neck of the giraffe have been produced, it is supposed, by a certain plastic character in the construction of animals, operated upon for a long course of ages by the attempts which these animals make to attain objects which their previous organization did not place ...
— An Expository Outline of the "Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation" • Anonymous
... reeds and rushes, where the hippopotamus' ponderous form has crushed into watery trails the soft composition of the morass as he passes from the lake on his nocturnal excursions; the lesser animals; such as the "mbogo" (buffalo), the "punda-terra" (zebra); the " twiga" (giraffe), the boar, the kudu, the hyrax or coney and the antelope; come here also to quench their thirst by night. The surface of the lake swarms with an astonishing variety of water-fowl; such as black swan, duck, ibis sacra cranes, pelicans; and soaring above on the look-out for their prey ...
— How I Found Livingstone • Sir Henry M. Stanley
... 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 crocodiles ready to seize upon the unwary. The hippopotamus was there ...
— Off to the Wilds - Being the Adventures of Two Brothers • George Manville Fenn
... am quite clever," said Saltash, as again his hand met Jake's. "Too clever sometimes. I needn't ask if all goes well with you, Jake. Your prosperity is obvious, but don't wax fat on it. Bunny now—he's as lean as a giraffe. Can't you do something to him? He looks as if he'd melt into thin air ...
— Charles Rex • Ethel M. Dell
... Paris when the giraffe, sent to that country, arrived. She and her keeper, Ati, landed at Bordeaux, amidst most enthusiastic acclamations, which accompanied them all the way to the metropolis. A deputation from each large town through which she passed, formed of the municipal authorities, met ...
— Anecdotes of the Habits and Instinct of Animals • R. Lee
... that Natural-Selection acts by slight variations.—These must be useful at once.—Difficulties as to the giraffe; as to mimicry; as to the heads of flat-fishes; as to the origin and constancy of the vertebrate, limbs; as to whalebone; as to the young kangaroo; as to sea-urchins; as to certain processes of {viii} metamorphosis; as to the mammary gland; ...
— On the Genesis of Species • St. George Mivart
... distance anybody on foot. Harry, when I heard those bullets whistling about me I felt as if I could outrun a horse, or a giraffe, or an antelope, or anything on earth! And thunder, Harry, I ...
— The Guns of Bull Run - A Story of the Civil War's Eve • Joseph A. Altsheler
... 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
... West, down a steep descent and camp. Came down River Mpokwa over rough country with sore feet, to ruins of a village Basivira and sleep. 21st.—Rest. 22nd.—Rest. Mr. Stanley shot two zebras yesterday, and a she giraffe to-day, the meat of the giraffe was 1000 lbs. weight, the two zebras ...
— The Last Journals of David Livingstone, in Central Africa, from 1865 to His Death, Volume II (of 2), 1869-1873 • David Livingstone
... Canaries. But its chief point of interest is its extending through Morocco as far as Arabo-African Socotra, and through the Khamiesberg Range of Southern Africa, where it is called the Kokerboom. As it is utterly African, like the hippopotamus, the zebra, and the giraffe, we must account, by transplantation from Socotra, for the D. Draco seen by Cruttenden in the mountains behind Dhofar and on the hills of El-Yemen. [Footnote: Journ. R. Geogr. Soc. p. 279, vol. viii. ...
— To the Gold Coast for Gold - A Personal Narrative in Two Volumes.—Vol. I • Richard F. Burton
... 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 ...
— Composition-Rhetoric • Stratton D. Brooks
... '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', 'barbican', ...
— English Past and Present • Richard Chenevix Trench
... 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 ...
— The Humour of Homer and Other Essays • Samuel Butler
... theory of racial inheritance or evolution, was that changes in animal life, wild or domestic, were brought about by the addition of very slight, perhaps imperceptible, variations. He argued that the giraffe with the longest neck could browse on higher leaves in time of drought and hence left offspring with slightly longer necks than ...
— The Dollar Hen • Milo M. Hastings
... large giraffe are about nine feet long, and its neck nearly six feet; while its body measures only seven feet in length and slopes rapidly from the neck ...
— New National Fourth Reader • Charles J. Barnes and J. Marshall Hawkes
... fearsome sight. Lions, bears, tigers, monkeys, a giraffe and a donkey, were followed by clowns, ...
— Patty Blossom • Carolyn Wells
... necks. Perhaps it is that their eternal aspiration slowly lifts their heads nearer and nearer to the stars. Or perhaps it has something to do with the fact that so many of them are vegetarians: perhaps they are slowly evolving the neck of the giraffe so that they can eat all the tops of the trees in Kensington Gardens. These things are in every sense above me. Such, anyhow, was the young man who did not believe in fairy tales; and by a curious coincidence he entered the ...
— Tremendous Trifles • G. K. Chesterton
... pigs of the Old and the peccaries of the New World 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 run through the palm of the hand to the knuckles are the metacarpals; ...
— Natural History of the Mammalia of India and Ceylon • Robert A. Sterndale
... the 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 ...
— The Sisters-In-Law • Gertrude Atherton
... reminds me of that old story about the farmer at the circus," said Grant. "He looked at the giraffe for a long time and then finally turned away in disgust. 'Oh, shucks,' he said, 'there ain't no such animal.' That's the way I feel about this island. There isn't any ...
— The Go Ahead Boys and the Treasure Cave • Ross Kay
... 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 will pass Tucker's Corner at five o'clock to-morrow ...
— Harper's Young People, July 13, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... of 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 and deer. These curious creatures were much like the ...
— The Elements of Geology • William Harmon Norton
... largely used in the tanning of leather. The mulundo bears a fruit about the size of a cricket ball covered with a hard green shell and containing scarlet pips like a pomegranate. The fauna includes the lion, leopard, cheetah, elephant, giraffe, rhinoceros, hippopotamus, buffalo, zebra, kudu and many other kinds of antelope, wild pig, ostrich and crocodile. Among fish are the barbel, bream and ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 2, Part 1, Slice 1 • Various
... 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 ...
— Through the Brazilian Wilderness • Theodore Roosevelt
... 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
... 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, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 327 - Vol. 53, January, 1843 • Various
... Jungleland. The Hartebeest and the Wildebeest, the Amusing Giraffe and the Ubiquitous Zebra, the Lovely Gazelle and ...
— In Africa - Hunting Adventures in the Big Game Country • John T. McCutcheon
... did not find it so: he says that the years 1831 and 1832 have, in relation to the revolution of July, the aspect of two mountains, where you can distinguish precipices, and that they embody "la grandeur revolutionnaire." The cooler spectator from Hamburg inspects at Paris "the giraffe, the three-legged goat, the kangaroos," without much of the vertigo of precipices, and he sees "M. de La Fayette and his white locks—at different places, however," for the latter were in a locket and the hero was in his brown wig. Elsewhere he associates "the virtuous La Fayette and James Watt the ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII. No. 30. September, 1873 • Various
... 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 ...
— The Panjab, North-West Frontier Province, and Kashmir • Sir James McCrone Douie
... is made so invisible by his wonderful colour that, when he crouches in the bright sunlight amid the tall brown grass, it is almost impossible to see him. But the zebra and the giraffe are the kings of all camouflagers! So deceptive are the large blotch-spots of the giraffe and his weird head and horns, like scrubby limbs, that his concealment is perfect. Even the cleverest natives often mistake a herd of giraffes for a clump of trees. ...
— The Human Side of Animals • Royal Dixon
... 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 ...
— The Magic of Oz • L. Frank Baum
... when he saw a giraffe for the first time? But he was wrong, my girl, for nature does turn ...
— December Love • Robert Hichens
... the hands of the receivers, he boarded the menagerie and the horses and in three months turned a profit of fifteen thousand dollars. More—he mortgaged all he possessed against the day of the auction, bought in the trained horses and ponies, the giraffe herd and the performing elephants, and, in six months more was quit of an of them, save the pony Repeater who turned air-springs, at another profit of fifteen thousand dollars. As for Repeater, he sold the pony several months ...
— Michael, Brother of Jerry • Jack London
... of good work so that they come to know what is simple and true and beautiful. To that end I would have you have a museum attached to these schools—not one of those dreadful modern institutions where there is a stuffed and very dusty giraffe, and a case or two of fossils, but a place where there are gathered examples of art decoration from various periods and countries. Such a place is the South Kensington Museum in London whereon we build greater hopes ...
— Miscellanies • Oscar Wilde
... from the first opined would not hold more than two enormous portmanteaus in some odd corner out of sight (portmanteaus which could now no more be got in at the door, not to say stowed away, than a giraffe could be persuaded or forced into a flower-pot): that this utterly impracticable, thoroughly hopeless, and profoundly preposterous box, had the remotest reference to, or connection with, those chaste and pretty, not to say gorgeous little ...
— American Notes for General Circulation • Charles Dickens
... 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, ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 3, August, 1850. • Various
... every word of it, from the moment she explosively told him that it was all very well to hee-haw up there like a doited giraffe, and his mind felt the same pleasure that the palate gets out of a good curry as she told him that the English were a miserable, decadent people who were held together only by the genius and application of the Scotch, that English ...
— The Judge • Rebecca West
... of acquired characters. It is apt to seem obvious to the plain man that 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 ...
— Anthropology • Robert Marett
... somewhat less important question than it seemed formerly, and still appears to most thinkers on the subject...The uses of the rattling of the rattlesnake as a protection by warning its enemies and as a sexual call are not rival uses; neither are the high-reaching and the far-seeing uses of the giraffe's neck 'rivals.'"), and aided by the effects of use, etc. The subject seems to me well worth further development. I do not think I have anywhere noticed the use of the eyebrows, but have long known that they protected the eyes ...
— More Letters of Charles Darwin - Volume I (of II) • Charles Darwin
... 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 temples, and ...
— Consolations in Travel - or, the Last Days of a Philosopher • Humphrey Davy
... described a head, almost entire, found in the gypsum 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 not possess" ...
— Lamarck, the Founder of Evolution - His Life and Work • Alpheus Spring Packard
... into the town almost as impressive as the circus's, and the boys went out to meet it beyond the corporation line in the same way. It always had two elephants, at least, and four or five camels, and sometimes there was a giraffe. These headed the procession, the elephants in the very front, with their keepers at their heads, and then the camels led by halters dangling from their sneering lips and contemptuous noses. After these began to come the show-wagons, with pictures on their sides, very flattered portraits of the wild ...
— Boy Life - Stories and Readings Selected From The Works of William Dean Howells • William Dean Howells
... on Harry, for Bert had pointed to the bright-colored pictures advertising the performance. There were shown men jumping through paper hoops or hanging from dizzy heights on trapeze bars, ladies riding galloping horses, and all sorts of wild animals, from the long-necked giraffe to the hippopotamus, who appeared to have no neck at all, and from the big elephant to the ...
— The Bobbsey Twins at Meadow Brook • Laura Lee Hope
... Armenia by Thothmes III., and the payment of a large tribute of antelopes and birds. When Ptolemy Philadelphus feted the Alexandrians (Athenoeus, v.), the Ethiopians brought dogs, buffaloes, bears, leopards, lynxes, a giraffe, and a rhinoceros. Doubtless this description of gifts was common. Live beasts are the one article of curiosity and amusement that barbarians can offer ...
— Inquiries into Human Faculty and Its Development • Francis Galton
... soldiers and clapped into prison, Harrington turned, all aglow, to Bob, and waited for the boy to echo his enthusiasm. But Bob waited till the cell-door clanged behind the Unspeakable Turk, and said: "Now tell me about the giraffe that fell ...
— The Patient Observer - And His Friends • Simeon Strunsky
... of the Giraffe of Sennaar, the country from which it comes. Some natives of Egypt having come to see the one in Paris in the costume of the country, the animal gave evident proofs of joy, and loaded them with caresses. This fact is explained by the circumstance that the Giraffe has an ardent affection for its Arabian keeper, and that it naturally is delighted with the sight of the turban and ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction. - Volume X, No. 280, Saturday, October 27, 1827. • Various
... 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 play cards? ...
— His Own People • Booth Tarkington
... last 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
... 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
... of pearls of Ormuz, and soft shawls of Cachemire. Encircled by his children, each of whom held alternately a white or fawn-coloured gazelle, an Arab clothed in his blue bornouz, led by a thick cord of crimson silk a tall and tawny giraffe. Fifty stout men succeeded two by two, carrying in company a silver shield laden with gold coin, or ...
— Alroy - The Prince Of The Captivity • Benjamin Disraeli
... 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. ...
— English-Esperanto Dictionary • John Charles O'Connor and Charles Frederic Hayes
... brought a sarpent skin that war a daisy, but I drew ther line on snakes. But he war twenty-three feet long, and ther look outer his eyes war not reassurin' by a blamed sight. I migh'er got a giraff skin, too, but she hed her baby with her, and I'm not breakin' up no giraffe families." ...
— The Wedge of Gold • C. C. Goodwin
... you is, Face the creatures, Or spot them sideways with your weather eye, Just to keep tab on their expansive features; It isn't pleasant when you're stepping high To catch a giraffe smiling ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume I. (of X.) • Various
... passed the night on the sofa in the parlor, with a colored woman asleep on the rug before the fireplace. Kate would not go to bed. She determined to stay awake until Harry should come home. But the sofa-cushions became more and more pleasant, and very soon she was dreaming that Harry had shot a giraffe, and had skinned it, and had stuffed the skin full of sumac-leaves, and that he and she were pulling it through the woods, and that the legs caught in the trees and they could not get it along, and then she woke up. ...
— What Might Have Been Expected • Frank R. Stockton
... from the New World, had already flung her on canvas, with a brace of sisters. She outstands there, a virgin poplar-tall; hair like ravelled flax and coiffed in the fashion of the period; neck like a giraffe's; lips shaped for kissing rather than smiling; eyes like a giraffe's again; breasts like a boy's, and something of a dressed-up boy in the total aspect of her. She has arms a trifle long even for such height as hers; fingers very long, too, with red-pink nails trimmed to a point. ...
— A Christmas Garland • Max Beerbohm
... kinds 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 is considered ...
— Harper's Young People, August 31, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... you are only seven years, you are old enough to read a boys' book about wild animals. Lions will catch and eat nearly all beasts that come in their way. They will even overpower a giraffe or a buffalo. The elephant and rhinoceros are almost the only quadrupeds a lion dare ...
— Harper's Young People, January 20, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... of which cannot now be recognized, though several are clearly sub-tribes of the Sioux. The Ohio is called "Ouaboustikou." The whole map is decorated with numerous figures of animals, natives of the country, or supposed to be so. Among them are camels, ostriches, and a giraffe, which are placed on the plains west of the Mississippi. But the most curious figure is that which represents one of the monsters seen by Joliet and Marquette, painted on a rock by the Indians. It corresponds with Marquette's description (ante, p. 59). This ...
— France and England in North America, a Series of Historical Narratives, Part Third • Francis Parkman
... 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 ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... those due to congenital factors may enter into the heritage of a species, and may add themselves to those already combined as the peculiar characteristics of a particular species. Let us take the giraffe and its long neck as a concrete example. The great length of this part is obviously an adaptive character, enabling the animal to browse upon the softer leafy shoots of shrubs and trees. The vertebral column of the neck comprises just the same number of ...
— The Doctrine of Evolution - Its Basis and Its Scope • Henry Edward Crampton
... the existence of a nightmare. Wherever I have looked there are animals. Listen. There is an Indian prince. He has with him two dromedaries. There is also one other Indian prince. With him is a giraffe. The giraffe drink every day one dozen best champagne to keep his coat good. I, the artist, have my bock, and my coat is not good. There is a guest with a young lion. There is a guest with an alligator. But especially there is ...
— The Man Upstairs and Other Stories • P. G. Wodehouse
... Jerome. Franciscan converts, in Volga region at Yang-chau; Zayton. Francolin (darraj of the Persians), black partridge. Frankincense, see Incense. Frederic II., Emperor, his account of the Tartars; story of implicit obedience; his cheetas; his leather money; his giraffe. French, the original language of Polo's Book; its large diffusion in that age. French Expedition up the Kamboja River. Frenchmen, riding long like. French mission and missionaries in China. Frere charnel. Frere, Sir B. Froissart. Fu-chau (Fo-kien, Fuju), paper-money at; wild ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo, Volume 2 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa
... saddle-cloths of 'em for the band of the forty-ninth Hussars. Your Majesty may have reckonized 'em; most people think it's giraffe skin, but it's really ...
— King John of Jingalo - The Story of a Monarch in Difficulties • Laurence Housman
... from the rival of the lion, that we have honoured so long in the arms of England. But we sincerely hope, that by the next arrival, it will not degenerate into a cow, or worse, a goat. But he tells us, that to our knowledge of the giraffe he has added considerably. He obtained in Nubia and Kordofan five specimens, two of which were males and three females. He regards the horns as constituting the principal generic character, they being formed by distinct bones, united to the frontal and parietal bones by a very obvious ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 14, Issue 387, August 28, 1829 • Various
... weighed ninety pounds. "Going on that theory, Pennsylvania ought to go as an elephant, and Rhode Island as a giraffe." ...
— The Green Satin Gown • Laura E. Richards
... wonderfully in dissecting the coarse leg of all three and finding nearly the same bones as in bat's wings or man's hand, but we see the clear mark in solid tibia of the fusion into it of the fibula. In all three we find their heads composed of three altered vertebrae, short neck, same bones as giraffe. In the upper jaws of all three we find small teeth like rabbit's. In dissecting them in foetal state we find at a not very early stage their form exactly alike the most different animals, and even with arteries running as in a fish: and this similarity ...
— The Foundations of the Origin of Species - Two Essays written in 1842 and 1844 • Charles Darwin
... distinguished writer, he is 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 ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XII. July, 1863, No. LXIX. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... chapter by some remarks on an important subject. With animals such as the giraffe, of which {221} the whole structure is admirably co-ordinated for certain purposes, it has been supposed that all the parts must have been simultaneously modified; and it has been argued that, on the principle of natural selection, this is scarcely possible. ...
— The Variation of Animals and Plants Under Domestication, Volume II (of 2) • Charles Darwin
... 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 ...
— The Western World - Picturesque Sketches of Nature and Natural History in North - and South America • W.H.G. Kingston
... behind modelled in little from the 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 coco-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; it was enclosed to the landward by a bulk ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 18 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... was a little boy named Peter 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
... move on he caught a glimpse of a figure mounting the incline. The motion was as lithe as a young giraffe; the legs were as straight as spears and as supple as a kiboko; the moulded hips swayed rhythmically like a banana frond in the breeze; the fluted arch of her back swelled proudly upwards to the resilient shoulders; and an arm as slender as a lizard's tail steadied the gourd upon ...
— Witch-Doctors • Charles Beadle
... King nearer to him than any other King upon earth; 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 ...
— What Led To The Discovery of the Source Of The Nile • John Hanning Speke
... of positivism—or the wild, fantastic, grotesque, monstrous things it conceived of, sometimes in a frenzy of effort to break away abruptly from all preceding types—but failing, in the giraffe-effort, for instance, or only caricaturing ...
— The Book of the Damned • Charles Fort
... 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 ...
— Secret Societies And Subversive Movements • Nesta H. Webster
... do zoos produce any new knowledge about animal behavior. Such knowledge must be got, not from animals penned up and tortured, but from animals in a state of nature. A college professor studying the habits of the giraffe, for example, and confining his observations to specimens in zoos, would inevitably come to the conclusion that the giraffe is a sedentary and melancholy beast, standing immovable for hours at a time and employing an Italian to feed ...
— Damn! - A Book of Calumny • Henry Louis Mencken
... said was very plausible. Between an ostrich of great height and a giraffe of medium height, seen at a certain distance, it is easy to make a mistake. If it were a question of a beak or a nose, both are none the less joined to the end of a long neck turned backward, and, strictly speaking, it may be said that an ostrich is only a half giraffe. It only needs the hind legs. ...
— Dick Sand - A Captain at Fifteen • Jules Verne
... get the picture of a {illust.}. It is a giraffe It is part of the old sign-language out of ...
— The Story of Mankind • Hendrik van Loon
... world long since went off its chump, And the cry of the man from France is, "I simply refuse to let shirts and shoes Prevent me from going to dances. I'll take the shine out of collar and pump, And their wearers will look silly When I once begin the Giraffe-Galump, The Chicken-Run and the Jaguar-Jump, The Wombat-Walk and the Buffalo-Bump, With a chamois vest on my manly chest, And football-boots and the smartest of suits ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, Feb. 12, 1919 • Various
... coupled together like railway-trucks, and laden with yellow clay or great balks of timber, or giant scales of bored armour-plating, or moleskin-clad, brawny navvies, progressed incessantly and at all hours through the thoroughfares of the metropolis behind huge, giraffe-necked, splay-wheeled, smoke-vomiting traction-engines. Houses and other buildings were being pulled down to make stations; great hoardings were up, enclosing spaces where work went on all day, amidst clankings and groanings of machinery, and clouds of oily-smelling steam, and ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves
... 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 his ...
— Boy Woodburn - A Story of the Sussex Downs • Alfred Ollivant
... 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 and struggle play ...
— At the Deathbed of Darwinism - A Series of Papers • Eberhard Dennert |
