"Giraffe" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... If, like a mole or a 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; and that a man sprawling on the road with a bruised chin, ...
— Back to Methuselah • George Bernard Shaw
... the moon, the fall of apples, and the 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 ...
— Logic - Deductive and Inductive • Carveth Read
... Ulyate had returned from Kijabe with the extra wagonload of 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 both ...
— Stories from Everybody's Magazine • 1910 issues of Everybody's Magazine
... him, and he in 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 plank ...
— The Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex • Charles Darwin
... spiritual view of things. Religion has for centuries been trying to make men exult in the 'wonders' of creation, but it has forgotten that a thing cannot be completely wonderful so long as it remains sensible. So long as we regard a tree as an obvious thing, naturally and reasonably created for a giraffe to eat, we cannot properly wonder at it. It is when we consider it as a prodigious wave of the living soil sprawling up to the skies for no reason in particular that we take off our hats, to the astonishment of the park-keeper. Everything ...
— The Defendant • G.K. Chesterton
... 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 ...
— Popular Adventure Tales • Mayne Reid
... 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 industry was dependent ...
— The Judge • Rebecca West
... 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
... 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 ...
— Tremendous Trifles • G. K. Chesterton
... 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 a very subordinate part in organic development, in comparison with co-operation ...
— At the Deathbed of Darwinism - A Series of Papers • Eberhard Dennert
... big lion with folded paws! O me! O my! I'm glad that I Am not in that lion's cage, because Suppose he'd open his horrible jaws! —But look! the clown is coming! Of course Facing the tail of a spotted horse And shouting out things to make folks laugh, And grinning up at the tall giraffe That placidly paces along and looks Just ...
— Child Songs of Cheer • Evaleen Stein
... 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 ...
— Gerfaut, Complete • Charles de Bernard
... will go to the Lord Mayor's Show, and thou shalt not stop me." Anarchism adjures us to 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, you step into a world of limits. You can free ...
— Orthodoxy • G. K. Chesterton
... wildlife populations (such as elephant, hippopotamus, giraffe, and lion) threatened because of poaching and ...
— The 2008 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... 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 ...
— Davy and The Goblin - What Followed Reading 'Alice's Adventures in Wonderland' • Charles E. Carryl
... and species; . . . but the view here developed renders such an hypothesis quite unnecessary. . . . The powerful retractile talons of the falcon and 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 neck than usual AT ONCE SECURED A FRESH RANGE OF PASTURE OVER THE ...
— Luck or Cunning? • Samuel Butler
... 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 ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 3, August, 1850. • Various
... disproportionate and even misleading in its version of the flora and fauna of that country. He might imagine that lions and leopards were commoner than they are in our hedgerows and country lanes, or that the head and neck of a giraffe was as native to our landscapes as a village spire. And that is why I apologise in anticipation for a probable lack of proportion in this work. Like the elephant, I may have seen too much of a special ...
— What I Saw in America • G. K. Chesterton
... announced Teddy with a comprehensive wave of the hand as they passed the giraffe, which stood silent in his roped enclosure, his head far ...
— The Circus Boys Across The Continent • Edgar B. P. Darlington
... explorers, and an escort of the royal fleet accompanied the exploring squadron up to the temple quay where the ships were to moor. Then the Thebans feasted their eyes on the wonderful treasures that had come from Punt, wondering at the natives, the incense, the ivory, and, above all, at a giraffe which had been brought home. How the poor creature was stowed away on the little Egyptian ship it is hard to see; but there he was, with his spots and his long neck, the most wonderful creature ...
— Peeps at Many Lands: Ancient Egypt • James Baikie
... towards the hill, I heard a peculiar noise behind a small rising on our right, and on looking over the crest, I was delighted to see two beautiful giraffe feeding peacefully a little distance away and straining their long necks to get at the tops of some mimosa-like trees, while a young one was lying down in the grass quite close to me. For some time I remained concealed, watching ...
— The Man-eaters of Tsavo and Other East African Adventures • J. H. Patterson
... intervals of from two to five years. Temperature 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, ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... 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 ...
— African Camp Fires • Stewart Edward White
... 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. It was bright daylight. But Harry ...
— What Might Have Been Expected • Frank R. Stockton
... of visiting the cages first. I do not complain of your natural wish to begin with the giraffe, because it has such an absurdly long neck and may possibly mistake Pamela's straw-hat for a bunch of hay and try to eat it, and because you will be able to see the hippopotamus on the way. As a matter of fact you will find that the giraffe is not standing near the bars at all, but close ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 158, June 2, 1920 • Various
... 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 ...
— Uncle William - The Man Who Was Shif'less • Jennette Lee
... the 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, it gave us all the complicated and wonderful organs of our bodies, and all their ...
— The Last Harvest • John Burroughs
... curiousest-osity I ever see was a crab they have in Japanese waters; big around's a clam-bucket and dangling gre't long laigs to it like a sea-going giraffe."' ...
— Cap'n Abe, Storekeeper • James A. Cooper
... 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?" ...
— Here and Now Story Book - Two- to seven-year-olds • Lucy Sprague Mitchell
... curious discovery about himself. Deeply buried in Peter's soul were the ghosts of all sorts of animals; Peter had once been a boa-constrictor, Peter had once been a bear, Peter had once been a rabbit and a giraffe, a turkey and a fox; and now under the spell of this weird music these dead creatures came to life in his soul. So Peter discovered the meaning of "jazz," in all its weirdly named and ...
— 100%: The Story of a Patriot • Upton Sinclair
... Jackson, junior, 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 road, and while Jackson, junior, held his ...
— The Book of the Bush • George Dunderdale
... Islands. The wapiti and heavy large-headed elk or moose, retreat before the advancing civilisation of North America. The Indian mountains and plains have noble races of deer. No species, however, is more celebrated than our red deer. The giraffe is closely allied to the stag family. The Arabs name it the seraph, and indeed, that is the origin of its now best-known English name. Visitors should beware of going too near the male, for we have seen the dent made by one of the giraffe's ...
— Heads and Tales • Various
... 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 some difference ...
— America To-day, Observations and Reflections • William Archer
... a 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
... what he pays with his right hand he will get back with his left, 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. ...
— Touch and Go • D. H. Lawrence
... Clint, think of 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 ...
— Left Tackle Thayer • Ralph Henry Barbour
... and therefore the plant must have died out. Just the same with 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 could not have been preserved.[2] In flat fishes ...
— Creation and Its Records • B.H. Baden-Powell
... 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 forbidden, ...
— Eighty Years And More; Reminiscences 1815-1897 • Elizabeth Cady Stanton
... later 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. ...
— Monsieur, Madame and Bebe, Complete • Gustave Droz
... diplomatic visit that proved his skill in foreign negotiations. The gifts that came to him from strange lands were presented, in reality, to the master of the Florentine "republic." Egypt sent a lion and a giraffe, which were welcomed as wonders of the East even by those who did not appreciate the fact that they showed a desire to trade. It was easy soon to find new markets for the rich burghers whose class was in complete ascendancy over the ...
— Heroes of Modern Europe • Alice Birkhead
... 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 than ...
— Essays in War-Time - Further Studies In The Task Of Social Hygiene • Havelock Ellis
... 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 ...
— The Student's Elements of Geology • Sir Charles Lyell
... Jim, who also contemplated the prodigy, "that big, chunky, awkward-lookin' things are sometimes ez spry ez you. They say that the Hipperpotamus kin outrun the giraffe across the sands uv Afriky, an' I know from pussonal experience that the bigger an' clumsier a b'ar is the faster he kin make you scoot fur your life. But he's the real Dutch, ain't he, Paul, one uv them fellers that licked the Spanish under the Duke uv Alivy ...
— The Scouts of the Valley • Joseph A. Altsheler
... 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 of shattered mountains. In ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 18 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... 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 ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 327 - Vol. 53, January, 1843 • Various
... 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 ...
— Twilight And Dawn • Caroline Pridham
... 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 ...
— Peck's Bad Boy at the Circus • George W. Peck
... 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 made a chief ...
— Middlemarch • George Eliot
... eight or nine years old I went to a tent show with Sam and Hun, my brothers. We was under the tents looking at a little Giraffe; a elephant come up behind me and touched me with its snout. I jumped back and run under it between its legs. That night they found me a mile from the tents asleep under some brush. They woke me up hunting me with pine ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States from Interviews with Former Slaves, Arkansas Narratives, Part 4 • Works Projects Administration
... 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 ...
— The Last of the Peterkins - With Others of Their Kin • Lucretia P. Hale
... 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') ...
— Missionary Travels and Researches in South Africa - Journeys and Researches in South Africa • David Livingstone
... unquestionably next. It made a processional entry 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 ...
— Boy Life - Stories and Readings Selected From The Works of William Dean Howells • William Dean Howells
... parade in the big [tent]—the [elephant], the [camel], the [giraffe], the [zebra], the [cages] with [lions], and [tigers], the [hippopotamus] and the [bear]. Then a pretty [lady] rode a white [horse], standing up on the [saddle] and waving a [flag]. Other horses ran races, and jumped, and walked upright. ...
— Jimmy Crow • Edith Francis Foster
... She looks at you as if you were a giraffe or something and she would like to take a pot at you with ...
— Three Men and a Maid • P. G. Wodehouse
... striped maple (Acer 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 of the ...
— The Hunters' Feast - Conversations Around the Camp Fire • Mayne Reid
... down upon 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 temples, and in its colossal aqueducts ...
— Consolations in Travel - or, the Last Days of a Philosopher • Humphrey Davy
... on 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 have ...
— The Sisters-In-Law • Gertrude Atherton
... avoids. It would, I am sure, be an entirely novel and remarkable kind of Drunk, and I am also certain it would be an offensive one. But I can't imagine it; I have no data. I could as soon evolve from my inner consciousness an intoxicated giraffe. But, as I say, this interesting experience has hitherto ...
— Certain Personal Matters • H. G. Wells
... Giraffe, Measures ten feet and a half, And I wonder if his neck Of rubber is made. Out of the sun He thinks he has run But only his ...
— Twilight Stories • Various
... 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 that ...
— Palestine or the Holy Land - From the Earliest Period to the Present Time • Michael Russell
... conclude this 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. But ...
— The Variation of Animals and Plants Under Domestication, Volume II (of 2) • Charles Darwin
... sick jackaroo that was pickin'-up at Big Billabong," said the Giraffe. "He had to knock off the first week, an' he's been here ever since. They're sendin' him away to the hospital in Sydney by the speeshall train. They're just goin' to take him up in the wagonette to the railway station, an' I thought I might as well go round ...
— Children of the Bush • Henry Lawson
... 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 saw ...
— King Solomon's Mines • H. Rider Haggard
... the force 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 been modified in the same way?" seems to me the weakest of the ...
— Alfred Russel Wallace: Letters and Reminiscences, Vol. 1 (of 2) • James Marchant
... from the acknowledged fact that use or disuse may cause the development or the partial atrophy of organs—the case of the 'blacksmith's arm.' Unfortunately some of the suggestions made by Lamarck, in this connexion—like that of the elongation of the giraffe's neck to enable it to browse on high trees—were of a kind that made them very susceptible to ridicule. His theory was of course dependent on the admission that acquired characters were transmitted from parents to children, and in the absence of any suggestion of 'selection,' ...
— The Coming of Evolution - The Story of a Great Revolution in Science • John W. (John Wesley) Judd
... 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
... 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 ...
— English-Esperanto Dictionary • John Charles O'Connor and Charles Frederic Hayes
... astronomiae, added several new constellations to the list, viz. Canes venatici (the Greyhounds), Lacerta (the Lizard), Leo minor (Little Lion), Lynx, Sextans Uraniae, Scutum or Clypeus Sobieskii (the shield of Sobieski), Vulpecula et Anser (Fox and Goose), Cerberus, Camelopardus (Giraffe), and Monoceros (Unicorn); the last two were originally due to Jacobus Bartschius. In 1679 Augustine Royer introduced the most interesting of the constellations of the southern hemisphere, the Crux australis or Southern Cross. He also suggested Nubes major, Nubes minor, and ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 7, Slice 2 - "Constantine Pavlovich" to "Convention" • Various
... any case, there was no inducement to make a display in my presence. What influence could I possibly exercise over the fortunes of that great female? A maternal hippopotamus in the Zoo would as soon think of hugging a young giraffe to propitiate the spectators. Of course you may take up the position that the hypocrisy is practised all day before her mistress, and that the mere momentum of habit carries it on at other times. This is plausible, but I suspect ...
— Behind the Bungalow • EHA
... 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 ...
— Darwiniana - Essays and Reviews Pertaining to Darwinism • Asa Gray
... 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 he said, "Won't you let Mr. Smith halt here with me ...
— The Cavalier • George Washington Cable
... He calls you an intuitive psychic. It is upon your intuitions that I'm banking now. My affection hampers me from fathoming Frank's inner-most thoughts. If I were really sure what he needed most, I'd get it for him if it were a spotted giraffe," declared his father passionately. "But I'm unable to go deeply enough ...
— Old Mr. Wiley • Fanny Greye La Spina
... 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, or made ...
— What Shall We Do Now?: Five Hundred Games and Pastimes • Dorothy Canfield Fisher
... 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 are also very long. The hind-legs seem much shorter, although, in reality, they are as long ...
— Round-about Rambles in Lands of Fact and Fancy • Frank Richard Stockton
... had been a thousand generations of men who used their arms but slightly, we should expect their descendants to show but a puny development of the upper extremities. Now let us apply all this to the animal kingdom in general. The giraffe, for instance, is a ruminant whose entire frame has been adapted to support an enormously long neck, which is of use to the animal in reaching the foliage of trees. The ancestors of the giraffe, having had ordinary ...
— Darwin, and After Darwin (Vol. 1 and 3, of 3) • George John Romanes
... the squirrels, to whom we have certainly devoted quite sufficient attention, we pass along to quite a different race of animals—that of the giraffe or camelopard. This is a noble-looking animal, as you see plainly enough by the engraving. The tongue of the giraffe is exquisitely contrived for grasping. In its native deserts, the animal uses it to hook down branches which are beyond the reach of its muzzle; and in the ...
— Stories about Animals: with Pictures to Match • Francis C. Woodworth
... 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 ...
— The Yellow God - An Idol of Africa • H. Rider Haggard
... to cross it many more times. In the canyon she'll be belly-deep to a giraffe, an' we got to figure a way out of the coulee 'fore we ...
— The Texan - A Story of the Cattle Country • James B. Hendryx
... species 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 buck, ...
— Supplement to Animal Sanctuaries in Labrador • William Wood
... coriaria) is 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
... 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 ...
— Charles Rex • Ethel M. Dell
... 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 ...
— The Humour of Homer and Other Essays • Samuel Butler
... their special carriage and wrote their last letters home, which would be mailed at Nakuro. But with the morning they were in the game country, and took advantage of the first stop to resume their seats in front. Now everything was changed. At one moment they would pass a group of giraffe, running in their ungainly fashion to one side; hartebeests, impalla and other varieties of antelope were everywhere, gazing in fearless fashion at the train. Herds of zebra came into sight, while through the trees scampered monkeys in ...
— The Rogue Elephant - The Boys' Big Game Series • Elliott Whitney
... when the grass was green; yes, at times I have seen it so black for miles that we could scarcely see the grass. There were all sorts of them, springbucks in myriads, blesbok and quagga and wildebeeste in thousands, sable antelope, sassaby and hartebeeste in herds, eland, giraffe and koodoo in troops; while the forests were full of elephant and the streams of sea-cow. They are all gone now, the beautiful wild creatures; the guns of the white men have killed them out or driven them away, and I suppose that it is as well ...
— Swallow • H. Rider Haggard
... the 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 ...
— Heroes Every Child Should Know • Hamilton Wright Mabie
... 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, Peter de ...
— Historical Tales, Vol 5 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality, German • Charles Morris
... "I'm a giraffe, am I not?" she declared; "and I'm still growing. Do show me your garden, Mr. Pengarth. I want to see your hollyhocks. Everyone ...
— The Malefactor • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... enough to cover England! Just think of the new forms of life—from a new ant to an elephant or hornless giraffe. The okapi was discovered near that great hunting-ground—and, who is to say there are not other animals as ...
— In Search of the Okapi - A Story of Adventure in Central Africa • Ernest Glanville
... 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 the grass of the meadows. Charles ...
— Falling in Love - With Other Essays on More Exact Branches of Science • Grant Allen
... 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 effects ...
— Hormones and Heredity • J. T. Cunningham
... had 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 ... ...
— 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
... low down, somewhat to the west of north; his Queen (Cassiopeia) the Seated Lady, beside him (a and b mark the top rail of her chair's back); while above her lies the poor constellation Camelopardus, the Giraffe. ...
— Half-Hours with the Stars - A Plain and Easy Guide to the Knowledge of the Constellations • Richard A. Proctor
... Sweeney 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
... had 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 ...
— Boy Woodburn - A Story of the Sussex Downs • Alfred Ollivant
... 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 of ...
— The Universal Reciter - 81 Choice Pieces of Rare Poetical Gems • Various
... dimensions, had 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 bowers, sketched by ...
— American Notes for General Circulation • Charles Dickens
... 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 ...
— Through the Brazilian Wilderness • Theodore Roosevelt
... 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 had been their ...
— With the Boer Forces • Howard C. Hillegas
... 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', 'barbican', ...
— English Past and Present • Richard Chenevix Trench
... 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
... species. He believed that some degree of change was produced by the physical conditions of life, the intercrossing of species, and by habits causing increased use or disuse of parts. Indeed he thought very many remarkable adaptations, such as that of the neck of the giraffe for browsing on trees, were the effect of habit. But he attributed, perhaps, more to a law of progressive development impressed on all forms of life, which thus would all in time gradually cease to be lowly, their place ...
— Life of Charles Darwin • G. T. (George Thomas) Bettany
... and 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. of 1838.] The line of growth, like the coffee-shrub and the copal-tree, ...
— To the Gold Coast for Gold - A Personal Narrative in Two Volumes.—Vol. I • Richard F. Burton
... was that he had been on the road not one hour, but two or three at least, and that he had started out with an armful of his tiny belongings. Here they had found his small pocket-handkerchief, there a gray giraffe from his Noah's ark; in another place a noseless doll that had descended to him from his eldest sister; then a top had been found—a top that he could not have spun for years to come. Would the years ever come when that ...
— Jersey Street and Jersey Lane - Urban and Suburban Sketches • H. C. Bunner
... Tattler! Latest Edition! Awful murder! Bank clerk absconded! Powder-mill explosion, and great strike of the Latin School boys!' roared Ted, going to meet his cousin with the graceful gait of a young giraffe. ...
— Jo's Boys • Louisa May Alcott
... After three years he came across her again, and calling her by name, she came up and put her trunk into the same pocket as of old. On the trip over he carried 1200 animals, only two dying, one being the giraffe which fell down a hatchway and broke his neck in two places—somehow a very fitting death ...
— The Incomparable 29th and the "River Clyde" • George Davidson
... this was most elaborately worked with the point of a thorn, so as to resemble the cuttings of a file: white pipe-clay was then arranged in patterns on the surface, while an ornament made of either an antelope's or giraffe's sinew was stuck in the extremity and turned up for about a foot in length. This when dry was as stiff as horn, and the tip was ornamented with a tuft of fur—the tip of a leopard's tail ...
— The Albert N'Yanza, Great Basin of the Nile • Sir Samuel White Baker |
