VII. The Graceful Camelopard
If anyone ever held his head high in this world it is Mr. Giraffe. If you could keep him for a pet he could easily poke his head in at a second-story window, and wake you up in the morning. He could stretch his tongue out, quite two feet, and lick your face, or twist it around a curl and pull your hair with it. And, if he would let you, you could climb out of the window onto his head, and toboggan-slide down his neck and back almost to the ground. You would have to put a feed box on the roof of the barn for him, and give him plenty of hay, corn, grass and carrots, or he would eat the tops of the shade trees. Maybe he would eat them anyhow, for he likes juicy green leaves that he pulls himself, better than anything else.
Guess what kind of an animal the giraffe is. Don't be ashamed if you can't guess. The Arabs on the desert, who have known him longest, gave it up long ago. They named him Xi-raph'a, which means graceful. A name that merely tells what a thing looks like is no name at all. Besides, the giraffe isn't a graceful animal. The Greeks, who were a very wise people, made another guess. They called him camelopard (ca-mel'o-pard) because, like the camel, he has a long neck, and his coat is spotted something like the leopard's. Really, the coloring and markings of the giraffe are more like those of the baby deer. The Greeks may never have seen the pretty spotted fawn of the northern forests, or they would have noticed that. The stretched-up neck, and small, arched, gazelle head of the giraffe are not at all like the thick, bent-down neck and tipped-up face of the camel. Let's look this queer animal all over and see what he is like.
He has the beautifully shaped, split hoofs and the slender legs of the antelopes, but the legs are so lengthened that his body appears to be lifted on stilts. His shoulders are so high that his fore-legs look longer than his hind legs, although they are the same length. He has a short brush mane, from between the ears to the shoulders, like the zebra, and the zebra, you know, is a small striped wild horse. He has the fly-whipper tail of the ox. Isn't that a mixture? But there's more to this living puzzle.
The giraffe's lustrous brown eyes are like those of the woodland deer, in beauty and gentleness, but they are set out from the head even more than the camel's eyes. Indeed, the giraffe can push
