where water often fails; but in recompense it has a tongue about two feet long — no small comfort to it when thirsty — and eyes that project after the manner of a shrimp, so that, if it likes, it can look behind it and in front at the same time. Thus, counterbalancing defect and advantage, we find the giraffe very fairly off, while in the conditions of its wild life there is much to rank it among the happier of the beasts.
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Next door, so to speak, to the giraffes are the zebras, and, passing from one to the other, the thought occurs how pleasantly art might be made to supplement nature in the coloring of animals, or how agreeable it would have been if in the first instance Nature herself had painted a few more of the larger animals as she has decorated these two comrades of the African wilderness.
In the bird world, color has been lavished prodigally, and among insects we find hues of every tone and brilliance. The wicked caterpillar, for instance, is defended, from those who would take away his ill-spent life, by shades of green and brown that harmonize with the vegetables he ravages; and why was the same considerate anxiety for its welfare not extended to the gentle hippopotamus?
A pea-green river-horse, browsing among the reed-beds of Old Nile, would have added a charm to the scene; and Stanley would hardly have been so angry with the behemoths of Victoria Nyanza if he had found them floating among the lotus-pads, painted in imitation of water-lilies. The rhinoceros, again, is a hideous object, from its vast expanse of mud-colored skin; yet what a surface he presents for a noble study in browns!
What fine effects of shade might not be obtained
