"Giraffe" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... and extravagant. The mind of the Englishman does not readily accept anything he cannot see or even sometimes anything he can see which is unprecedented in his experience, so that like the West American farmer, confronted for the first time by the sight of a giraffe, his impulse is to cry out ...
— Secret Societies And Subversive Movements • Nesta H. Webster
... 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 a very subordinate part in organic development, in ...
— At the Deathbed of Darwinism - A Series of Papers • Eberhard Dennert
... the clowns, the tumblers, the strong men, and the riders flying about in the air as if the laws of gravitation no longer existed. But, best of all, was the grand conglomeration of animals where the giraffe appears to stand on the elephant's back, the zebra to be jumping over the seal, the hippopotamus to be lunching off a couple of crocodiles, and lions and tigers to be raining down in all directions with their mouths, wide open and their tails as stiff as that ...
— Under the Lilacs • Louisa May Alcott
... 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 neck than usual AT ONCE SECURED A FRESH RANGE OF PASTURE OVER THE SAME GROUND AS ...
— Unconscious Memory • Samuel Butler
... 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 Judge • Rebecca West
... and cards being all despatched, authentic intelligence is at length diffused throughout Paris of her arrival, and such a commotion is forthwith excited as had never been seen even in that city of commotions, since the time the Giraffe made her entree into it, and said to the gaping multitude, "Mes amis, il n'y a qu'une bete de plus." Perhaps the sensation might be excepted which was created by "Messieurs les Osages," the American deputation whose "France" has not yet, we believe, appeared in either hemisphere. The Rue de Rivoli ...
— The American Quarterly Review, No. 17, March 1831 • Various
... of atar-gul, and Indians with panniers 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 chased ...
— Alroy - The Prince Of The Captivity • Benjamin Disraeli
... be defended, it may be shown that those witticisms, aimed at him, about the giraffe getting its long neck by continually stretching it, or the whale getting its tail by holding its hind legs too close in swimming, do not apply to Darwinism, but to the exploded theory of his great ...
— The Art of Lecturing - Revised Edition • Arthur M. (Arthur Morrow) Lewis
... effects of use and disuse are transmitted to offspring. So, too, thought Lamarck, who half a century before Darwin propounded a theory of the origin of species that was equally evolutionary in its way. Why does the giraffe have so long a neck? Lamarck thought it was because the giraffe had acquired a habit of stretching his neck out. Every time there was a bad season, the giraffes must all stretch up as high as ever they could towards the leafy tops of the trees; and the one that stretched up farthest survived, ...
— Anthropology • Robert Marett
... soil erosion; deforestation; desertification; wildlife populations (such as elephant, hippopotamus, giraffe, and lion) threatened because of ...
— The 1998 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... you look at the giraffe comin' up out o' the bottom of the say?" We looked in the direction he pointed and saw a long, glossy neck surmounted by a small head rising above the surface of the river. Presently the back of the creature was exposed, brown and glossy as the ...
— The Land That Time Forgot • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... was never my forte. I had all my life considerable respect for the horse as an animal, pretty much as I dreaded a lion or a tiger; but as to my intention of mounting upon the back of one, and taking a ride, I should as soon have dreamed of taking an airing upon a giraffe; and as to the thought of buying, feeding, and maintaining such a beast at my own proper cost, I should just as soon have determined to purchase a pillory or a ducking-stool, by way of ...
— The Confessions of Harry Lorrequer, Complete • Charles James Lever (1806-1872)
... 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 being taken ...
— Life of Charles Darwin • G. T. (George Thomas) Bettany
... flight, and this gain consisted first in rising from the toes, lifting the heels completely off the ground. At the same time the leg and foot were gradually lengthened. Doubtless in this way the fleet animals, like the deer, the horse and the giraffe, first came by their long legs. Constant elimination of the short-legged ones, by the pursuing enemy, resulted in the selection of the long-limbed ones for breeding purposes, and hence to the ultimate elongation of ...
— The Meaning of Evolution • Samuel Christian Schmucker
... advantage, and is 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 been seen ...
— The Stranger in France • John Carr
... 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 ...
— Charles O'Malley, The Irish Dragoon, Volume 1 (of 2) • Charles Lever
... jauntily, impatiently shuffled their sandals of giraffe hide, and hitched up their belts in which ...
— Sacrifice • Stephen French Whitman
... 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 bony knobs on a pannel close to its ...
— Heads and Tales • Various
... little about him as he could, while in his earlier editions Erasmus Darwin and Buffon were not so much as named. Mr. Wallace, on the contrary, at once raised the Lamarckian spectre, and declared it exorcized. He said the Lamarckian hypothesis was "quite unnecessary." The giraffe did not "acquire its long neck by desiring to reach the foliage of the more lofty shrubs, and constantly stretching its neck for this purpose, but because any varieties which occurred among its antitypes with a longer neck than ...
— The Humour of Homer and Other Essays • Samuel Butler
... 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 ...
— Falling in Love - With Other Essays on More Exact Branches of Science • Grant Allen
... 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 are ...
— Davy and The Goblin - What Followed Reading 'Alice's Adventures in Wonderland' • Charles E. Carryl
... which sharp-pointed stakes were fixed, the pits being then carefully covered over with branches and grass, so as completely to conceal them. Similar pitfalls are used in many parts of Africa for entrapping the giraffe ...
— Great African Travellers - From Mungo Park to Livingstone and Stanley • W.H.G. Kingston
... 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 ...
— The Book of the Bush • George Dunderdale
... 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, ...
— The Last of the Peterkins - With Others of Their Kin • Lucretia P. Hale
... responsible for them in captivity are constantly harassed by fears that they will stampede in their stalls or yards, and break their own necks and legs in most unexpected ways. They require greater vigilance than any other hoofed animals we know. Sometimes a giraffe will develop foolishness to such a degree as to be unwilling to go out of its own huge door, into a ...
— The Minds and Manners of Wild Animals • William T. Hornaday
... large cakes were floating past, accumulating at the bend below the town and raising the water level well above the top of the Marquis's dam. The river was what Joe Ferris had a way of calling "swimmin' deep for a giraffe." ...
— Roosevelt in the Bad Lands • Hermann Hagedorn
... 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 ...
— Lamarck, the Founder of Evolution - His Life and Work • Alpheus Spring Packard
... 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 a more ...
— King Solomon's Mines • H. Rider Haggard
... simple-minded monsters live in Afriky, and are believed to be human beins to a slight extent, altho' they are not allowed to vote. In this department is one or two superior giraffes. I never woulded I were a bird, but I've sometimes wished I was a giraffe, on account of the long distance from his mouth to his stummuck. Hence, if he loved beer, one mugful would give him as much enjoyment while goin down, as forty mugfuls would ordinary persons. And he wouldn't get intoxicated, which is a beastly way of amusin oneself, ...
— The Complete Works of Artemus Ward, Part 5 • Charles Farrar Browne
... of the country abounds with game. On one occasion a herd of antelopes crossed the path as tamely as if they had been sheep, and tracks of giraffe and larger game were frequently seen. Guinea-fowl were so plentiful that one of the white men at Mpwapwa told us that he did not trouble to fire at them unless he could ensure killing two or ...
— Adventures in Many Lands • Various
... comprises arguments from example. That is, if a truth be asserted of an individual, it can therefore be predicated of the class to which the individual belongs. For instance, if the first time a person saw a giraffe, he observed that it was eating grass, he would be justified in saying that giraffes are herbivorous. All gold is yellow, heavy, and not corroded by acid, though no one has tested it all. However, every giraffe does not have one ear brown and the other gray because the first one seen ...
— English: Composition and Literature • W. F. (William Franklin) Webster
... that the arm and hand of a monkey, the foreleg and foot of a dog and of a horse, the wing of a bat, and the fin of a porpoise, are fundamentally identical; that the long neck of the giraffe has the same and no more bones than the short one of the elephant; that the eggs of Surinam frogs hatch into tadpoles with as good tails for swimming as any of their kindred, although as tadpoles they never enter the water; that the Guinea-pig is furnished with incisor teeth which it ...
— Darwiniana - Essays and Reviews Pertaining to Darwinism • Asa Gray
... owner of the show, who had made fun of him: "Here's your elephant, and whenever any of your old animals get on the warpath, and you want 'em rounded up, don't forget my number, 'cause I can knock the spots out of any animal except a giraffe." The crowd cheered pa again and he got down off the elephant, took off his fire extinguisher, and handed Bolivar a piece of rag carpet, and said: "Eat it, you old catamaran, or I'll kill you," and Bolivar was so ...
— Peck's Bad Boy at the Circus • George W. Peck
... The beautiful Giraffe, found only in South Africa, is like the camel in some respects, and the deer in others. That long neck which it arches so gracefully when you offer it a bun, enables it in its forest-home to feed upon the leaves of trees; so you see it is for use, ...
— Twilight And Dawn • Caroline Pridham
... refuge as in a sanctuary; and he declared that he should take the boss who had been so kind to his boys, and both the young bosses, to a wild place where they would find game in abundance, and where the forests held the great rhinoceros, plenty of elephants, and amongst whose open glades the tall giraffe browse the leafage of the high trees. There in the plains were herds of buffalo too numerous to count, quagga, zebra, gnu, eland, and bok of all kinds. There was a great river there, he said, full of fish, and with great crocodiles ready to seize upon the unwary. The hippopotamus ...
— Off to the Wilds - Being the Adventures of Two Brothers • George Manville Fenn
... 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 on a ...
— Phemie Frost's Experiences • Ann S. Stephens
... in undertaking this expedition, the youths were influenced by different motives. This was to a great extent true; and yet they had a common purpose beside that of mere amusement. The consul for the Netherlands had been instructed by his government to procure a young male and female giraffe, to be forwarded to Europe. Five hundred pounds had been offered for the pair safely delivered either at Cape Town or Port Natal; and several parties of hunters that had tried to procure these had failed. They had shot and otherwise killed camelopards by ...
— The Giraffe Hunters • Mayne Reid
... Westward the vast territories of Kordofan and Darfur afford grazing-grounds to a multitude of cattle, and give means of livelihood to great numbers of Baggara or cow-herd Arabs, who may also pursue with activity and stratagem the fleet giraffe and the still fleeter ostrich. To the south-east lies Bahr-el-Ghazal, a great tract of country occupied by dense woods and plentifully watered. Further south and nearer the Equator the forests and marshes become exuberant with tropical growths, and the whole ...
— The River War • Winston S. Churchill
... 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. ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 7, Slice 2 - "Constantine Pavlovich" to "Convention" • Various
... giraffe. 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, are widely distributed throughout the interior of Southern ...
— Forest & Frontiers • G. A. Henty
... 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, ...
— On the Origin of Species - 6th Edition • Charles Darwin
... 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 chamois or the ibex was to be found in any district of Palestine. Dr. Shaw ...
— Palestine or the Holy Land - From the Earliest Period to the Present Time • Michael Russell
... beasts, more strange than the giraffe, You conjure up to view, The flue-box and the forking-calf, Unknown at any Zoo; And new vocations you unfold, Wonder on wonder heaping, Hell-banging for the ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, Aug 15, 1917 • Various
... of dirt, so that they may not be too readily snapped up by birds of prey. But the Boy—to call him by his scientific name—has no such protection. Look at this red shirt and these white trousers, and this hat as big as a trout pool! Could anything be more ridiculous? Even a giraffe does not ...
— The Ontario Readers - Third Book • Ontario Ministry of Education
... limited to a single Species, while other combinations may be repeated in many. We have striking examples of this among Birds: the Ostrich stands alone in its Genus, while the number of Species among the Warblers is very great. Among Mammalia the Giraffe also stands alone, while Mice and Squirrels include many Species. Genera are founded, not, as we have seen, on general structural characters, but on the finish of special parts, as, for instance, on the dentition. The Cats have only four grinders in the upper jaw and three in the lower, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 54, April, 1862 • Various
... bubbles are all examples of gravitation: or that the purifying of the blood by breathing, the burning of a candle, and the rusting of iron are all cases of oxidation: or that the colouring of the underside of a red-admiral's wings, the spots of the giraffe, the shape and attitude of a stick-caterpillar, the immobility of a bird on its nest, and countless other cases, though superficially so different, agree in this, that they conceal and thereby protect ...
— Logic - Deductive and Inductive • Carveth Read
... ago, say the geologists, there were great forests where Louisiana now is. Among these mighty trees roamed the glyptodont; the 16-foot armadillo with a tail like the morning-star of the old crusaders, monstrously magnified; the giraffe camel; the titanothere; the Columbian elephant, about the size of a trolley car and with 15-foot tusks; the giant sloth which could look into a second-story window; here the saber-toothed tiger fought with the megatherium; mighty rhinoceroses ...
— The Industrial Canal and Inner Harbor of New Orleans • Thomas Ewing Dabney
... said Long 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 ...
— The Scouts of the Valley • Joseph A. Altsheler
... they hunt the prey in a pack; that is, the lion and the lionesses all hunt the prey together; and they are even helped by the older cubs. They need to hunt in a pack when the prey happens to be large, such as a buffalo or a giraffe. A lion by himself could seldom kill a buffalo ...
— The Wonders of the Jungle, Book Two • Prince Sarath Ghosh
... 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 ...
— Through the Brazilian Wilderness • Theodore Roosevelt
... 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 ...
— In His Image • William Jennings Bryan
... 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 ...
— The Yellow God - An Idol of Africa • H. Rider Haggard
... few inches in height, and is far from agreeing with the descriptions of the horn of the unicorn. The nearest approach to a horn in the middle of the forehead is exhibited in the bony protuberance on the forehead of the giraffe; but this also is short and blunt, and is not the only horn of the animal, but a third horn standing in front of the two others. In fine, though it would be presumptuous to deny the existence of a one-horned quadruped other than the rhinoceros, it may be safely stated that the insertion ...
— TITLE • AUTHOR
... 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
... you're right, Davy," said the tall, angular fellow who seemed to own the queer name of Giraffe, though his long neck plainly proved why it had been given to him by his mates. "But don't it beat the Dutch how many times Doe Hobbs has had to give up a jolly trip, and hurry back home, just when the fun was going to begin, because the old ...
— The, Boy Scouts on Sturgeon Island - or Marooned Among the Game-fish Poachers • Herbert Carter
... par-excellence, for all of them were of enormous size, and some were by far the largest of all four-footed animals, exceeded in bulk only by the modern whales. In contrast to the carnivorous dinosaurs these are quadrupedal, with very small head, blunt teeth, long giraffe-like neck, elephantine body and limbs, long massive tail prolonged at the tip into a whip-lash as in the lizards. Like the elephant they have five short toes on each foot, probably buried in life in a large soft pad, but the inner ...
— Dinosaurs - With Special Reference to the American Museum Collections • William Diller Matthew
... 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 enclosure ...
— What I Saw in America • G. K. Chesterton
... moment Mak uttered an exclamation, and pointed towards a particular spot in the plain before us, where, close by a clump of trees, we saw the graceful head and neck and part of the shoulders of a giraffe. We were naturally much excited at the sight, this being the first we ...
— The Gorilla Hunters • R.M. Ballantyne
... they exaggerate the right thing. Let us point to heaven with tusks and horns and fins and trunks and tails so long as they all point to heaven. The ugly animals praise God as much as the beautiful. The frog's eyes stand out of his head because he is staring at heaven. The giraffe's neck is long because he is stretching towards heaven. The donkey has ears to hear—let ...
— Alarms and Discursions • G. K. Chesterton
... found in New Zealand. It is the largest bird known, with long legs, a long neck, and short wings, useless for flight. One specimen that has been found is upward of thirteen feet in height. There is no reason why some should not have been much taller. More compares its height to that of a giraffe. The Maoris call this bird the Moa, and their legends and traditions are full of mention of it. When they first came to the island, six or seven hundred years ago, they found these vast birds everywhere, and hunted ...
— A Strange Manuscript Found in a Copper Cylinder • James De Mille
... gold epergne, which represents men and monkeys engaged in gathering the fruit of a group of dom-palms. Two individuals lead each a tame giraffe by the halter, others kneeling on the rim raise their hands to implore mercy from an unseen enemy, while negro prisoners, grovelling on their stomachs, painfully attempt to raise their head and shoulders from ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 4 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... of the giraffe are next door, but separated by a high wire fence, so that even the long neck of the giraffe cannot bend over and touch the hippos. Of all animals, the giraffe is, perhaps, the most odd, his neck is so very long, and his markings so rich. He looks as if he had a ...
— The Children's Book of London • Geraldine Edith Mitton
... majesty itself, after making the experiment of yachts and frigates, quietly and comfortably return to its palace on board a steamer, we may be the less surprised at finding the Marquis of Londonderry and his family making their way across the Channel in the steamer Giraffe. Yet it is to be remarked, that though nothing can be more miscellaneous than the passengers, consisting of Englishmen, Frenchmen, Germans, and Yankee; of Jews, Turks, and heretics; of tourists, physicians, smugglers, and all the other diversities of idling, business, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 327 - Vol. 53, January, 1843 • Various
... 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. ...
— Uncle William - The Man Who Was Shif'less • Jennette Lee
... see 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 weak. I must say also ...
— Alfred Russel Wallace: Letters and Reminiscences, Vol. 1 (of 2) • James Marchant
... character now arrived on the scene. A magnificent giraffe came along through the bushes, eating the tender shoots as it approached the spot.Pinocchio saw the giraffe and recognized it at once from a picture of one he had seen in school. The lion saw it also. What should he do? Continue to watch the marionette, or attack and carry off ...
— Pinocchio in Africa • Cherubini
... 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
... four-twenty-five, the guns burst forth in all their fury, and all along the German line I saw not only exploding shells, but the bursting oil drums with their pillars of liquid fire, whose smoke rose high in the air with a peculiar turn at the top which looked like the neck of a huge giraffe. At once the Germans sent up rockets of various colours, signalling for aid from their guns, and the artillery duel of the two great armies waxed loud and furious. I stood on the hill with some of our men, and watched ...
— The Great War As I Saw It • Frederick George Scott
... worthless as friends. In the hunt they helped her locate her quarry. Often they would come racing through the trees to her side to announce the near presence of antelope or giraffe, or with excited warnings of the proximity of Sheeta or Numa. Luscious, sun-kissed fruits which hung far out upon the frail bough of the jungle's waving crest were brought to her by these tiny, nimble allies. Sometimes they ...
— The Son of Tarzan • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... modification; but they all committed 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 ...
— The Will to Believe - and Other Essays in Popular Philosophy • William James
... 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. ...
— Orthodoxy • G. K. Chesterton
... 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 Universal Reciter - 81 Choice Pieces of Rare Poetical Gems • Various
... Peter Rabbit, Beatrix Potter Lions and Tigers, Anonymous Apes and Monkeys, Anonymous The Hippopotamus and the Rhinoceros, Anonymous The Giraffe, Anonymous Parrots, Anonymous Rab and His Friends, John Brown, M.D. A Ride With a Mad Horse in a Freight-Car, W. H. H. Murray A-Hunting of the Deer, Charles ...
— The Junior Classics Volume 8 - Animal and Nature Stories • Selected and arranged by William Patten
... bones being the same in the hand of a man, wing of a bat, fin of a porpoise, and leg of the horse, the same number of vertebrae forming the neck of the giraffe and of the elephant, and innumerable other such facts, at once explain themselves on the theory of descent with slow and slight ...
— Famous Reviews • Editor: R. Brimley Johnson
... with them they have brought their pets. Monsieur, it was 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. ...
— The Man Upstairs and Other Stories • P. G. Wodehouse
... 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 expanse ...
— The Student's Elements of Geology • Sir Charles Lyell
... sure he will not return. The first months comprise all the shocks of disappointment that are likely to disgust a new-comer. The sphere of opportunity opens slowly, but to a man of his abilities and culture—rare enough here—with the sureness of chemistry. The Giraffe entering Paris wore the label, "Eh bien, messieurs, il n'y a qu'une bete de plus!" And Oxonians are cheap in London; but here, the eternal economy of sending things where they are wanted makes a commanding claim. Do not suffer ...
— The Correspondence of Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson, 1834-1872, Vol II. • Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson
... 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} ...
— On the Genesis of Species • St. George Mivart
... sofa, and which his lady, with a modest yet most magnificent sense of its limited 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 ...
— American Notes for General Circulation • Charles Dickens
... 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 ...
— Dick Sand - A Captain at Fifteen • Jules Verne
... 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 out ...
— The Story of a Bad Boy • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... twice also I thought that I caught sight of the outline of some tall creature moving silently through the scattered thorns a couple of hundred yards or so to our right. It might have been an elephant or a giraffe, or perhaps nothing but a shadow, so I said nothing. As I heard no noise I was inclined to believe the latter explanation. In any case, what was the good of speaking? Unarmed and solitary amidst unknown dangers, our position was desperate, ...
— The Ivory Child • H. Rider Haggard
... This tall 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
... it I see?" begged the younger boy, wringing his hands and glaring across the short strip of water between the powerboats. "I know there ain't no sech animile, as the farmer said when he first saw the giraffe at ...
— The Girls of Central High in Camp - The Old Professor's Secret • Gertrude W. Morrison
... moonlight night, and she had been revelling in the peace of it, when suddenly this outcry from above had shot her out of her hammock like an explosion. She ran upstairs, fearing she knew not what. She found Nutty sitting on the bed, looking like an overwrought giraffe. ...
— Uneasy Money • P.G. Wodehouse
... porcupines, snakes, lizards, tortoises, locusts, and white ants, or is forced to seek the seeds of wild grasses, or to pluck wild herbs, fruits, and roots; whilst at the proper seasons they hunt the wild elephant, buffalo, giraffe, zebra, pigs, and antelopes; or, going out with their arrows, have battues against the ...
— The Discovery of the Source of the Nile • John Hanning Speke
... — N. 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; ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... on the subject of varieties 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 ...
— Luck or Cunning? • Samuel Butler
... 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 violence being done to our reason and to the right use of language, but it cannot differ from it so ...
— God the Known and God the Unknown • Samuel Butler
... allies with horns and without upper incisors as the Buffalo, Stag Fallow Deer, Wild Goat, Swine, Goat, wild Goats Muskdeers, Chamois, Giraffe. ...
— The Notebooks of Leonardo Da Vinci, Complete • Leonardo Da Vinci
... stretching my neck!" suddenly cried a Spotted Wooden Giraffe, and the Nodding Donkey, looking up, saw that the Elephant had wound his trunk around the long neck ...
— The Story of a Nodding Donkey • Laura Lee Hope
... 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 ...
— Needlework As Art • Marian Alford
... 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 costume ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction. - Volume X, No. 280, Saturday, October 27, 1827. • Various
... Alexandrian library, a specimen of the original type invented by Memnon the Egyptian, and a manuscript of the first play acted by Thespis. These had not exhausted the stock of the dealer: he possessed the skin of a giraffe killed in the Roman amphitheatre; the head of King Arthur's spear; and the breech of the first cannon fired at the siege of Constantinople. The jury, however, thought that the virtuoso having ordered those curiosities, ...
— Blackwoods Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 366, April, 1846 • Various
... of the Australian wilderness, may now be seen in the Regent's Park for the first time in this hemisphere. For the first time, also, the wart hog of Africa there roots, and the hippopotamus displays his quaint gambols; and that "fairest animal," the giraffe, is now beheld in health and vigor, a naturalized inhabitant of ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Vol. 3, July, 1851 • Various
... 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; ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 18 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... 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 ...
— The Elements of Geology • William Harmon Norton
... hippopotamus, cow, cotton, duck, sugar, rabbits, rice, lighthouse, candle, lead-pencil, pins, tiger, clothing, silver, butter-making, giraffe, ...
— Children's Rights and Others • Kate Douglas Smith Wiggin
... 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
... presented a fearsome sight. Lions, bears, tigers, monkeys, a giraffe and a donkey, were followed by clowns, acrobats, trapeze performers, ...
— Patty Blossom • Carolyn Wells
... 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 ...
— African Camp Fires • Stewart Edward White
... similar to that employed in war. All the subjects of the chase were sculptured on the monuments with great spirit and fidelity, especially the stag, the ibex, the porcupine, the wolf, the hare, the lion, the fox, and the giraffe. The camel is not found among the Egyptian sculptures, nor the bear. Of the birds found in their sculptures were vultures, eagles, kites, hawks, owls, ravens, larks, swallows, turtle-doves, quails, ostriches, ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume III • John Lord
... wonder," she said, "whether a horse doesn't sometimes get tired holding his head out at the end of his neck. And as for a giraffe, I don't see ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume III. (of X.) • Various
... in the way of sanitation, and yet more as to the advisability of a daily bath, for while even in hotels they give one an enormous carafe, which might be called a giraffe, its neck is so long, filled with drinking water surrounded by endless tumblers, the basin is scarcely bigger than a sugar bowl, while the jug is about the ...
— Through Finland in Carts • Ethel Brilliana Alec-Tweedie
... R. Soc. Lit., 1847, p. 369, and 1863, p. 65) refers to an armed invasion of 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 to ...
— Inquiries into Human Faculty and Its Development • Francis Galton
... use or disuse of them. To give a few examples, the woodpecker and the humming-bird have got their peculiarly long tongues from the habit of extracting their food with their tongues from deep and narrow folds or canals; the frog has developed the web between his toes by his own swimming; the giraffe has lengthened his neck by stretching up to the higher branches of trees, and so on. It is quite certain that this use or disuse of organs is a most important factor in organic development, but it is not sufficient to explain the origin ...
— The Evolution of Man, V.1. • Ernst Haeckel
... 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 ...
— Left Tackle Thayer • Ralph Henry Barbour
... 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 ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 3, August, 1850. • Various
... 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 ...
— Consolations in Travel - or, the Last Days of a Philosopher • Humphrey Davy
... and later measured my intellectual powers with, but, as they became a novelty, there was new zest in occasionally seeing them. After I had been there a short time, I heard a call one day: "Heads out!" I ran with the rest and exclaimed, "What is it?" expecting to see a giraffe or some other wonder from Barnum's Museum. "Why, don't you see those boys?" said one. "Oh," I replied, "is that all? I have seen boys all my life." When visiting family friends in the city, we were in the way of making the acquaintance of their sons, and as all ...
— Eighty Years And More; Reminiscences 1815-1897 • Elizabeth Cady Stanton
... 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 ...
— Cobb's Anatomy • Irvin S. Cobb
... forms. But his main argument was derived 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 ...
— The Coming of Evolution - The Story of a Great Revolution in Science • John W. (John Wesley) Judd
... lions in the country we have traversed; it is too populous. On the other side of the mountains, if we return that way, we shall find them in plenty. Wherever the antelopes are in herds, wherever you find the wild horse, zebra, and giraffe, you will as certainly find the lion, for he preys ...
— The Mission; or Scenes in Africa • Captain Frederick Marryat
... sight to see Was Leo's Giraffe Cavalry; As down the battle plain they tore, The Rebels ...
— The Animals' Rebellion • Clifton Bingham
... 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 on the sly. ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume I. (of X.) • Various
... 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. ...
— What Might Have Been Expected • Frank R. Stockton
... destroy all other species of animals that inhabit the country around them—even the strong heavy rhinoceros is not feared by them, though the latter frequently foils and conquers them. Young elephants sometimes become their prey. The fierce buffalo, the giraffe, the oryx, the huge eland, and the eccentric gnoo, all have to succumb to their ...
— The Bush Boys - History and Adventures of a Cape Farmer and his Family • Captain Mayne Reid
... and secret advantage from this intellectual connection. She received her mixed and decorous guests with a kind of tall, ponderous grace, peculiarly her own and which awakened in the mind of intimidated strangers incongruous and improper reminiscences of an elephant, a giraffe, a gazelle; of a gothic tower—of an overgrown angel. Her Thursdays were becoming famous in their world; and their world grew steadily, annexing street after street. It included also Somebody's Gardens, a Crescent—a ...
— Tales of Unrest • Joseph Conrad
... betrayed a lack of caution when, having broken his former record by eating thirty-six raw eggs at a sitting, he climbed upon a steam merry-go-round, shortly thereafter falling off the spotted wooden giraffe which he rode, and being removed to the city hospital in ...
— One Third Off • Irvin S. Cobb
... 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
... 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
... chose a Giraffe's head. Certain anatomical similarities seemed to make the choice wise. With a long vividly striped stockinet neck wrinkling like a mousquetaire glove, the neat small head that so closely fitted his own neat small head, the tweaked, interrogative ears,—Beautiful-Lovely, the Wolf Hound, reared ...
— Peace on Earth, Good-will to Dogs • Eleanor Hallowell Abbott |
