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The
Reign of
Botnets
The
Reign of
Botnets
Defending Against Abuses,
Bots and Fraud on the Internet

David Sénécal
Copyright © 2024 by John Wiley & Sons, Inc. All rights, including for text and data mining, AI training, and similar
technologies, are reserved.

Published by John Wiley & Sons, Inc., Hoboken, New Jersey.

Published simultaneously in Canada and the United Kingdom.

ISBNs: 9781394262410 (Paperback), 9781394262427 (ePDF), 9781394262434 (ePub)

No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, elec-
tronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, scanning, or otherwise, except as permitted under Section 107 or 108 of the 1976
United States Copyright Act, without either the prior written permission of the Publisher, or authorization through payment
of the appropriate per-­copy fee to the Copyright Clearance Center, Inc., 222 Rosewood Drive, Danvers, MA 01923, (978)
750-­8400, fax (978) 750-­4470, or on the web at www.copyright.com. Requests to the Publisher for permission should
be addressed to the Permissions Department, John Wiley & Sons, Inc., 111 River Street, Hoboken, NJ 07030, (201) 748-­6011,
fax (201) 748-­6008, or online at www.wiley.com/go/permission.

Trademarks: WILEY and the Wiley logo are trademarks or registered trademarks of John Wiley & Sons, Inc. and/or its affiliates,
in the United States and other countries, and may not be used without written permission. All other trademarks are the property
of their respective owners. John Wiley & Sons, Inc. is not associated with any product or vendor mentioned in this book.

Limit of Liability/Disclaimer of Warranty: While the publisher and author have used their best efforts in preparing this
book, they make no representations or warranties with respect to the accuracy or completeness of the contents of this book
and specifically disclaim any implied warranties of merchantability or fitness for a particular purpose. No warranty may be
created or extended by sales representatives or written sales materials. The advice and strategies contained herein may not be
suitable for your situation.You should consult with a professional where appropriate. Further, readers should be aware that
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Neither the publisher nor author shall be liable for any loss of profit or any other commercial damages, including but not
limited to special, incidental, consequential, or other damages.

For general information on our other products and services, please contact our Customer Care Department within the
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Library of Congress Control Number: 2024936163

Cover image: © CSA-­Printstock/Getty Images

Cover design: Wiley
For Dana, Daphne, Dawson, and, of course, Mr. Dean!
 About the Author

David Sénécal grew up in France, lived in Germany and England, and immigrated to the
United States in 2005. He lives with his family in the San Francisco Bay Area, California, and
works for Akamai Technologies as a principal product architect. He brings 25+ years of experi-
ence working with web performance, security, and enterprise networking technologies through
various roles (support, integration, consulting, development, product management, architecture,
and research). He started working on bot detection concepts for Akamai in 2010, which became
the very successful Bot Manager product, consistently recognized as a market leader by
Forrester. He helped define the concept of bot management in the early 2010s, which combines
bot detection, classification, visibility, and response strategy. The competition and the industry
later adopted this term. In his current role, David leads a team of researchers, developers, and
architects to keep up with the evolution of attacks and define the next generation of bot and
fraud detection products.
Follow David on LinkedIn at www.linkedin.com/in/davidsenecal.

vii
 About the Technical
Editor
Tyson Thomas has been a researcher in application security for eight years, focusing on bot
detection algorithms leveraging behavioral biometric, device telemetry, and network data from
web and mobile clients. Originally part of Akamai’s acquisition of Cyberfend in 2017, he now
leads the data science team at Akamai for the Bot Manager Premier security product. Prior to
entering cybersecurity, he worked on developing pattern recognition and anomaly detection
algorithms for drug discovery, manufacturing, automotive, retail, and military hyperspectral
imaging applications. Before entering the private sector,Tyson worked at the NASA Jet Propul-
sion Laboratory researching neural network and evolvable hardware while completing a PhD
in electrical engineering at the University of Southern California. He has a bachelor’s degree
in physics and economics.

ix
 Acknowledgments

It takes a village to raise a child, and this is also true when writing a book. Many talented
researchers, data scientists, developers, and business leaders have indirectly contributed to this
book while working with me on building the Bot Manager product I have been responsible for
the last 10 years. Their input and feedback have been invaluable in shaping the direction of the
product and furthering my understanding of the bot and fraud problem.
I want to acknowledge my mentors throughout the years who helped me in my journey
as a professional: Patrice Boffa, who allowed me to build the very first prototype of Bot Man-
ager more than 10 years ago; John Dilley, who recruited me as a product architect and trusted
me to build Akamai’s Bot Manager product; and finally Sreenath Kurupati, who helped me
appreciate and understand the world of machine learning and artificial intelligence. I’m grateful
for their trust in my instincts, for giving me guidance and support to solve difficult problems,
and for allowing me to experiment and develop a fantastic product that protects thousands of
websites around the world.
From the research and development team, I’d like to call out in no particular order key
people who helped me throughout the years execute and deliver my vision: Spandan Brahmb-
hatt, Luke Stork, Chunliang Wu, Pujan Motiwala,Yossef Daya, Ory Segal, Nils Rehm, Nikolai
Tschacher, Idan Pinto, Michael Bergmann, Harish Somaraddi, Prajaka Bhurke, Tu Vuong, Sai
Modalavalasa, and more.
From the product management team, I’d like to acknowledge my partners in crime for
many years, Pawan Bajaj and Maik Maurer.
A special thank you to my technical editor,Tyson Thomas, a cybersecurity veteran and lead
data scientist who peer-­reviewed this work and provided valuable feedback to improve the

xi
xii Acknowledgments

quality of this book. Finally, a shout-­out to a rising artist, my niece Julie Sénécal, who designed
the robot illustrations and icons, adding character to the book.
All traffic graphs come from the Akamai Control Center with authorization from Akamai
Technologies.
I’ll always be grateful to be surrounded by such talented people.
—­David Sénécal
 Contents

Introductionxvii

Chapter 1 A Short History of the Internet 1

From ARPANET to the Metaverse 2
The Different Layers of the Web 7
The Emergence of New Types of Abuses 9
The Proliferation of Botnets 11
Quantifying the Bot Traffic Volume on the Internet 14
Botnets Are Unpredictable 16
Bot Activity and Law Enforcement 18
Summary19

Chapter 2 The Most Common Attacks Using Botnets 21

Account Takeover 22
Data Harvesting 23
Credential Harvesting 26
Account Takeover 31
Targeted ATO Attacks 34
A Credential Stuffing Attack Example 35
Account Opening Abuse 38
The Tree Hiding the Forest 39
Fraud Ring 41
Web Scraping 48
The Intent Behind Scraping by Industry 49
Good Bot Scraping 51

xiii
xiv Contents

Inventory Hoarding 53
Business Intelligence 55
Scalping: Hype Events 58
Online Sales Events Mania and Scalping 58
The Retailer Botnet Market 59
Anatomy of a Hype Event 61
Carding Attacks 64
Gift Cards 65
Credit Card Stuffing 66
Spam and Abusive Language 66
Summary67

Chapter 3 The Evolution of Botnet Attacks 69

Incentive vs. Botnet Sophistication 70
HTTP Headers 101 71
Common HTTP Headers 71
Legitimate Browser Signatures 74
Header Signatures from Bot Requests 75
The Six Stages of a Botnet Evolution 77
Stage 1: Deploy the Botnet on a Handful of Nodes Running a
Simple Script 77
Stage 2: Scale the Botnet and Impersonate the Browsers’
Header Signatures 79
Stage 3: Reverse Engineer JavaScript and Replay Fingerprints 80
Stage 4: Force the Web Security Product to Fail Open 81
Stage 5: Upgrade the Botnet to a Headless Browser 82
Stage 6: Resort to Human/Manual Attack 84
Botnets with CAPTCHA-­Solving Capabilities 85
Human-­Assisted CAPTCHA Solver 85
Computer Vision 88
The CAPTCHA Solver Workflow 88
AI Botnets 89
The Botnet Market 91
Summary93

Chapter 4 Detection Strategy 95

Data Collection Strategy 96
Positive vs. Negative Security 98
 Contents xv

The Evolution of the Internet Ecosystem 99

The Evolution of Detection Methods 100
Interactive Detection 100
Transparent Detection 103
The State of the Art 106
Transparent Detection Methods 108
Good Bot Detection 109
Good Bot Categories 111
IP Intelligence 115
Cookie Handling 118
JavaScript Execution Handling 119
Device Intelligence 120
Proof of Work 123
Behavioral Biometric Detection 125
Headless Browser Detection 128
User-­Behavior Anomaly Detection 130
Email Intelligence 135
Advanced PII Data Assessment 140
Risk Scoring 142
Formula143
Consuming the Risk Score 144
Summary145

Chapter 5 Assessing Detection Accuracy 147

Prerequisites148
High-­Level Assessment 149
Website Structure 150
Website Audience 151
Types of Clients 151
Assessing the Shape of the Traffic 152
Quantitative Assessment (Volume) 155
Feedback Loop 156
Response Strategy Assessment 158
Low-­Level Assessment 158
IP Intelligence 159
Device Intelligence 163
Assessment Guidelines 168
Identifying Botnets 170
xvi Contents

Botnet Case Study 173

The Evening Crawler 174
The Sprint Scraper 175
The Night Crawler 176
The Cloud Scraper 177
Summary177

Chapter 6 Defense and Response Strategy 179

Developing a Defense Strategy 180
Do-It-Yourself180
Buying a Bot Management Product from a Vendor 182
Defense in Depth 184
Technology Stack to Defend Against Bots and Fraud 186
Detection Layer to Protect Against Bot Attacks 186
Detection Layer to Protect Against Online Fraud 188
Response Strategies 189
Simple Response Strategies 190
Advanced Response Strategies 191
Operationalization193
Mapping a Response Strategy to a Risk Category 193
Preparing for Special Events 195
Defending Against CAPTCHA Farms 196
Summary197

Chapter 7 Internet User Privacy 199

The Privacy vs. Security Conundrum 199
The State of Privacy and Its Effect on Web Security 201
IP Privacy 201
Cookie Tracking Prevention 204
Anti-­fingerprinting Technology 206
The Private Access Token Approach 213
The High-­Level Architecture 214
The PAT Workflow 214
PAT Adoption 216
Summary218

References219
Index223
 Introduction

I’ve been interested in technology since a very young age with a particular attraction to
­computers, even if in the late 1980s and 1990s their capabilities were limited compared to
what we have today. When I finished high school, the Internet existed but was not widely
available.When it came time for me to choose a major for my college application, I looked for
something that would allow me to learn and work with this emerging technology. I graduated
from the Paul Sabatier University in Toulouse in the South of France in 1998 with a major in
electrical engineering with a specialty in computer networking and telecommunications.
Armed with this unusual high-­tech degree and my knowledge of network protocols and com-
puter programming, I started my career as a network administrator for a major insurance
company (Les Mutuelles du Mans Assurances – MMA) in France, overseeing and enhancing
the headquarters’ network, supporting more than 5,000 users. After a few years, with my solid
understanding of networks and telecommunication, I felt I needed an extra challenge. I moved
to England to work as a multilingual technical support engineer for Azlan, a company later
acquired by Tech Data, specializing in distributing networking equipment. Remotely helping
customers configure and install their switches, routers, and firewalls was occasionally challeng-
ing. Doing so in French, English, and German and dealing with multiple regional accents
made things even more interesting. Not only did I have to learn several products, but I also
sometimes helped customers configure them in unexpected ways.
Several years later, I felt like introducing a change in my life again, and I moved to the
United States, where I started working for Akamai Technologies.There, I became more familiar
with the intricacies of the Internet. My focus was initially on helping companies accelerate
their websites. I worked with the top brands on the Internet from various industries, including
e-­commerce, travel and hospitality, media, social media, healthcare, and banking. It quickly
evolved to help secure their websites as well. What became rapidly apparent to me was that
most of the traffic on any website came from bots, causing stability issues. The tools available at

xvii
xviii Introduction

the time to defend against such activity (mainly web application firewalls) were only partially
effective. New tools needed to be developed to deal with the problem more effectively. So, once
more, I decided to get out of my comfort zone and started building a product focusing mostly
on bot detection. After all, how hard could it be? This started a new phase of my career as a
product architect. At the time, I thought I’d work on solving this problem for a couple of years
and then move on to the next challenge. I certainly managed to solve the original threat, but
I did not anticipate how it would evolve then. More than 10 years later, I am still working on
bot management.
Bot management products evolved rapidly and grew in complexity while becoming a
must-­have product for protecting life online. However, existing knowledge on bot and fraud
detection is fragmented, surrounded by many misconceptions fueled by marketing pitches,
myths, and sometimes outdated best practices. This makes the subject much more confusing
and frustrating for web security professionals and website owners to understand. The lack of
understanding of the problem prevents them from dealing with it effectively, ultimately benefit-
ing fraudsters.
While building bot management products, educating security professionals became a big
part of my mission. My peers, the sales force, the product support staff, and, more importantly,
customers looking to use my products to protect their online business needed to be trained.
Good content that goes to the heart of the problem in simple terms is hard to find and mostly
nonexistent. So, I thought: maybe I should write a book! Because, after all, how hard could it
be? It turns out it’s not easy but somewhat easier and less time-­consuming than building a bot
management product! I persevered and wrote this book to cover the knowledge gap on the
threat landscape and defense strategies. I want to unveil the mystery, clear up some misconcep-
tions, clarify best practices, and make bots and fraud detection more accessible. This book
focuses on the bot management concepts and applies to any product, whether from a vendor
or homegrown.
This book aims to provide a comprehensive overview of the threat landscape and defense
strategies. It provides some insight into the evolution of attacks and defense strategies over time,
the motivation of attackers, how detection methods work, and how to analyze the traffic to
assess accuracy and decide on the most appropriate response strategy. The knowledge acquired
from this book will help security teams regain their advantage over attackers.

Who Should Read This Book

The target audience for this book includes web security professionals, website administrators,
and anyone interested in or wanting to learn more about web security and, more specifically,
bot management and automated fraud detection. No specific prior knowledge or experience is
required to understand the content of this book.
 Introduction xix

Beginners will learn the basics of the Internet and web security while progressively diving
deeper into bots, fraud, and abuse detection and mitigation. Web security practitioners with inter-
mediate or advanced knowledge will better understand the threat evolution and the methods
and best practices to mitigate attacks consistently and successfully. Executives and decision-­makers
reading this book will better appreciate the topic without the common vendor buzzwords or
marketing bias, which will help them ask the right questions and make informed buy or build
decisions. Technology managers (product managers) and implementers (security architects, develop-
ers, solution architects) will better understand the context of the bot problem and the best
practices to integrate and use bot management technology to drive the most optimal outcome.
Data scientists, data analysts, and security operation support staff monitoring and evaluating the activ-
ity detected will be able to interpret the data with a full understanding of the problem and help
make data- and context-­driven decisions to support the needs of their organization. Students in
the field of computer science who are attracted to the cybersecurity space will gain a general
understanding of the most critical security issues that affect online businesses today.
Any online business that generates significant revenue is at risk of fraudsters attacking their
website using botnets to steal information, take over their users’ identity, and make off with any
assets included in the accounts. E-­commerce sites (Amazon, Nike, Macy’s), social media and
dating sites (Facebook, LinkedIn, Match.com), fintech/banking sites (Bank of America, U.S.
Bank, Wells Fargo), digital media (Netflix, Hulu, NBC), and gaming websites (Roblox, Elec-
tronic Arts, Epic Games) are all targets of bot and fraud attacks abusing the resources available
on the website.
 1
A Short History of the
Internet

Our journey begins with a description of the evolution of the Internet and the emergence of
a new type of fraud and abuse that leverages botnets.

1
2 The Reign of Botnets

From ARPANET to the Metaverse

The Internet is so ingrained in our day‐­to‐­day life that it seems as though it’s always been
around. However, the Internet is a relatively new invention—­and it keeps evolving. The pre-
cursor of the Internet, called the Advanced Research Projects Agency Network (ARPANET),
was invented in the 1960s, in the middle of the Cold War, to ensure continuity of availability
of the network and computing resources even after a portion of it is removed or destroyed.
Government researchers could also share information quickly without requiring them to
travel to another location. ARPANET was a closed system using proprietary protocols, and
only explicitly authorized people could access it.The idea of a network where one could share
information and computing resources sparked the interest of academics, and the need for
standardized communication protocols arose. Various communication protocols, including
Transmission Control Protocol/Internet Protocol (TCP/IP), Hypertext Transfer Protocol
(HTTP), and Domain Name System (DNS), were developed in the 1980s, marking the birth
of the Internet as we know it today. TCP/IP defines how information is exchanged between
two machines on the Internet. DNS, the equivalent of the phone book, transforms a hostname
into the IP address where the service can be found. HTTP defines how web content is to be
requested and shared between the browser running on the client and the web server. These
protocols enable communication between systems from different vendors and connect them.
Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) and, later, the Transport Layer Security (TLS) protocols add a layer
of security and safety to the HTTP protocol. Newer languages like HyperText Markup Lan-
guage (HTML) and JavaScript were invented to help develop websites and make content
available in a structured and dynamic way.
Initially, the Internet was reserved for the technical elite who knew the protocols, had the
right equipment, understood how to connect to the network, and knew how to query it to
retrieve information.The development of web browser software in the 1990s, like Netscape and
Internet Explorer, compatible with all of the aforementioned protocols and languages, made the
Internet accessible to all. Web search engines such as AltaVista, Yahoo! Search, and Google
Search also made it easier to query and find information online. When I was a college student
in the 1990s, the Internet was in its infancy. All you could do was visit various websites to find
information. Most news outlets would have a website with the latest sports results or events of
the world. Major retailers started to create websites to showcase their products, and airlines
advertised their flights. But e‐­commerce wasn’t quite a thing just yet, and we still had to go to
a brick‐­and‐­mortar shop to buy products or to a travel agency to book a flight.
Rapid technological advancement, including faster modems and expansion of the network
infrastructure, supported the growth of the Internet. As the Internet grew more popular, inves-
tors started pouring money into a multitude of Internet companies with the hope of turning a
 A Short History of the Internet 3

profit one day. These companies’ valuations, which were purely based on speculative future
earnings and profits, surged in the late 1990s with record‐­breaking initial public offerings
(IPOs) that saw their stock triple within a day. These events fueled an irrational investment
strategy from venture capital firms to companies that sometimes did not have a strong business
plan or viable products for fear of missing out. In March 2000, large stock sell orders from lead-
ing high‐­tech companies like Cisco or Dell caused a panic sale and marked the beginning of
the decline of the “Internet bubble.” Investors became more rational, and capital became harder
to find for startups that were not profitable. Many of these cash‐­strapped startups disappeared
rapidly. Companies that reorganized and refocused their effort on developing valuable services
and products survived, and some, like Akamai Technologies, Google, Amazon, and Apple,
became very successful and key players in the development of the Internet.
When the bubble burst, it felt like a setback, but eventually, the Internet not only survived
but started to thrive. As the quality of the Internet network improved, so did the content. The
classic dial‐­up modem connection that had a maximum speed of 56Kbps was soon replaced by
a more advanced and reliable network and telecom infrastructure. Integrated Services Digital
Network (ISDN) offered speeds of up to 128Kbps, more than double what a dial‐­up modem
could achieve. At the turn of the century, digital subscriber lines (DSLs), which offered high‐­
speed Internet, became more widely available through conventional telephone networks, cable,
and fiber optics. Today, Internet service providers offer connections as fast as 10Gbps, which is
178,571 times faster than the fastest dial‐­up modem. Advancements in mobile telecommunica-
tion and the emergence of smartphones meant that consumers could access the Internet from
anywhere at any time for the first time. Mobile network expansion also helped expand the
reach of the Internet to rural areas. Today, one can even browse the Internet while on a plane
or cruising on the ocean, thanks to satellite networks.
As more and more people were drawn to the Internet, the distribution of rich content
became a real issue. The networks that carried the Internet traffic did not always have the
adequate capacity to handle the demand. Telecom operators would do their best to route the
traffic, but frequent congestion and often long distances between the client and the server led
to slow page load or stream buffering for Internet users, especially during popular events.
Content Delivery Network (CDN) companies like Akamai Technologies, Fastly, and Cloud-
flare, to name a few, became the backbone of the Internet. CDNs helped fix the problem by
avoiding transporting the content long distances and bringing it closer to the user. CDNs
helped make the Internet faster and more reliable. I’ve worked on and off for the biggest CDN
company in the world, Akamai Technologies, since 2006 and saw the Internet evolve from a
front‐­row seat.
Let’s look at different types of websites and services that became available on the Internet
and how they managed to turn their online presence into a revenue stream.
Discovering Diverse Content Through
Random Scribd Documents
 THE GHOSTS OF THE TROPICAL FOREST.

Perhaps the rarest, certainly the least known to man of all the
creatures which, by a strange chance, find their way to the Gardens
of the Zoological Society in Regent’s Park, are the denizens of the
Tropical Forest. We say forest, because, though divided by the
dissociable ocean, there is only one great forest which belts the
globe. The notion of the physical symmetry of the world, which
fascinated the old geographers, and led Herodotus to surmise that
the course of the great river of Africa must of necessity conform in
the main to that of the Danube in the opposite continent, was wrong
in theory and application. But shifting the guiding forces from the
control of original and plastic design to the influence of the dominant
Sun, the theory still holds good; and while the tropical heats remain
constant and undisturbed, so must the tropical forest flourish and
endure, with its inseparable concomitants of vegetable growth
overpowering and replacing the marvellous rapidity of vegetable
decay.
To the naturalist, the most marked feature of the great tropical
forest south of the Equator, is the inequality in the balance of Nature
between vegetable and animal life. From the forests of Brazil to the
forests of the Congo, through the wooded heights of northern
Madagascar, to the tangled jungles of the Asiatic Archipelago and
the impenetrable woods of New Guinea, the boundless profusion of
vegetable growth is unmatched by any similar abundance in animal
forms. A few brilliant birds of strange shape and matchless plumage,
such as the toucans of Guinea and the Amazon, or the birds of
paradise in the Moluccas or the Papuan Archipelago, haunt the
loftiest trees, and from time to time fall victims to the blow-pipe or
arrow of the natives, who scarcely dare to penetrate that foodless
region, even for such rich spoils, until incantation and sacrifice have
propitiated the offended spirits of the woods; but except the sloth
and the giant ant-eater, there is hardly to be found in the tropical
regions of the New World a quadruped which can excite the curiosity
of the naturalist, or form food even for the wildest of mankind. In
the corresponding tracts of Africa and the Asiatic Archipelago, the
rare four-footed animals that live in the solitary forests are, for the
most part, creatures of the night. Unlike the lively squirrels and
marten-cats of temperate regions, they do not leave their hiding-
places till the tropical darkness has fallen on the forest, when they
seek their food, not on the surface of the ground, but, imitating the
birds, ascend to the upper surface of the ocean of trees, and at the
first approach of dawn seek refuge from the hateful day in the dark
recesses of some aged and hollow trunk. There is nothing like the
loris or the lemur in the fauna of temperate Europe. We may rather
compare them to a race of arboreal moles, the condition of whose
life is darkness and invisibility. But, unlike the moles, the smaller
members of these rarely seen tribes are among the most beautiful
and interesting creatures of the tropics, though the extreme difficulty
of capturing creatures whose whole life is spent on the loftiest forest
trees, is further increased by the reluctance of the natives to enter
the deserted and pathless forests. The beautiful lemurs, most of
which are found in Madagascar, are further believed by the Malagasi
to embody the spirits of their ancestors; and the weird and plaintive
cries with which they fill the groves at night, uttered by creatures
whose bodies, as they cling to the branches, are invisible, and
whose delicate movements are noiseless, may well have left a doubt
on the minds of the first discoverers of the island as to whether
these were not in truth the cries and wailings of true lemures, the
unquiet ghosts of the departed.
Several of the larger lemurs are to be found at the Zoo, and
though these suffer so much if unduly exposed to the light that
before long they lose their sight, they may occasionally be seen in
their cages. Others, the rarest and most delicate members of the
race, are so entirely creatures of darkness that their exposure to
daylight seems to benumb all their faculties. They appear drugged
and stupefied, and, though capable of movement, seem indisposed
either to attempt escape when handled, or to move in any other
direction than that of shelter from the odious day. Even food is
refused before nightfall, and, unlike the epicure’s ortolans, which
awake and feed in a darkened room whenever the rays of a lamp
suggest the sunrise, the lemur only consumes its meal of fruit and
insects when nightfall has aroused its drowsy wits. These midnight
habits clearly unfit it for public exhibition at the Zoo, and the last
and rarest of the tribe which have arrived in London occupy a private
room adjacent to the monkey palace, in common with other lemurs
and loris, and a few of the most delicate marmosets and tropical
monkeys which have escaped the rigours of an English winter. One
large cage, which, in spite of the label “Coquerel’s Lemur” placed
upon it, seemed at the time of our last visit to contain nothing but a
pile of hay, is the dwelling-place of these latest guests. After
displacing layer after layer of the hay, the two sleeping beauties
were discovered lying in a ball, each with its long furry tail wrapped
round the other, in the deepest and most unconscious repose. When
at last the two were separated, and the least reluctant was taken in
the hand, the extreme beauty of the little “ghost” was at once
apparent. In colour it is a rich cinnamon, fading to lavender beneath.
The texture of the fur is like nothing but that of the finest and best-
finished seal-skin jacket, only far deeper and closer, so that the hand
sinks into it as into a bed of moss. The head is large and most
intelligent, the face being set with a pair of very large, round, hazel
eyes, in which the lines of the orbit seem not to radiate from the
centre, but to be arranged in circles, like the layers of growth in the
section of a tree. The long tail is at the base almost as wide as the
body, tapering to a point, and covered with deep fur. But the
greatest beauty of form which this lemur owns is the shape of its
hands and feet. These exquisite little members are so far an exact
reproduction of the human hand, that not only the hands, but also
the feet, own a fully-developed thumb. But each finger, as well as
the thumb, expands into a tiny disc, as in certain tree-frogs, so that
the little hands may cling to the tree with the tightness of an air-
pump. It is plain, as the half-sleeping lemur climbs over the arms
and shoulders of its visitor, that it takes him for a tree. The arms are
stretched wide apart, the thumbs and fingers are spread, and grasp
each fold of the coat with the anxious care of one who thinks that a
slip will cause a fall of a hundred feet, and the soft body and tail half
envelop the limb down which they are descending, fitting to the
surface like some warm enveloping boa. As soon as it reaches the
hay-pile in its cage the lemur instantly burrows, its long tail
vanishing like a snake, and in a minute it is once more asleep, and
unconscious of the world.
A near relation of the lemurs is a beautiful little creature, whose
uncouth native name has not been replaced, called the “moholi.” It
only differs from the lemurs in the shape of the ears, which in the
moholi are either pricked up, like those of a bat, or folded down on
its head at will. It has the same wonderful brown eyes, so large and
round that they seem to occupy the greater part of the head; the
moholi is, in fact, “all eyes.” As it stretches its slender arms out wide
against the keeper’s chest, and turns its head to look at the visitors,
it has the most winning expression of any quadruped we have ever
seen. The coat, of a pinkish-grey above, turns into light saffron
below, and the texture is less deep than the lemur’s fur. In touch it
resembles floss-silk, thickly piled. The “Slow Loris,” from Malacca, is
a tailless lemur. In exchange it has received a fretful temper, which
seems a permanent trait in this species. When wakened it growls,
bites, and fights, until once more allowed to sleep in peace. This
loris hardly falls short of the beauty of the lemurs. The fur is cream-
coloured, with a cinnamon stripe running from the head down the
back. Of the three species which we have described, the first seems
to combine some of the characteristics of the monkey and the mole,
the second of the squirrel and the bat, the last those of the monkey
and the weasel tribe. The “Slender Loris” is a still greater puzzle. It
has all the characteristic “points” of the lemurs, without the tail. In
size it resembles a squirrel; but its movements are so strange and
deliberate, and so unlike those of any other quadruped, that it
seems impossible to guess either at its habits or its purpose in
creation. Each hand or foot is slowly raised from the branch on
which it rests, brought forward, and set down again; the fingers
then close on the wood until its grasp is secure, when the other
limbs begin to move, like those of a mechanical toy. As we looked,
its “affinities” with other types presently suggested themselves. It is
a furry-coated chameleon. The round, protruding eyes, the slow
mechanical movements, and the insect-feeding habits, are identical,
except that the loris hunts by night and the chameleon by day. The
loris even possesses an auxiliary tongue, which aids it in catching
moths, just as the development of the same member marks the
insect-catching lizard. From dawn till dusk all the lemurs are the very
bond-slaves of sleep, hypnotized in the literal sense, drugged and
steeped in slumber. Had the old poets known them, had the
Phœnician sailors brought them back when they visited the land of
Ophir, they would have been the consecrated companions of
Somnus. Ovid’s famous picture of the Cave of Sleep, and the
noiseless hall where
“A couch of down, raised high on ebony,
Self-coloured, sombre, draped with sable pall,
Stands in the midst, whereon that god doth lie,
While all his limbs relaxed in slumber fall,”

wants but one touch to complete the drowsy theme—a sleeping

lemur curled up on Somnus’ dusky pillow.
 THE BUTTERFLY FARM AT THE ZOO

A collection of tropical butterflies and moths reared in the

Zoological Gardens was exhibited in the rooms of the Royal Society
at their annual soirée in 1893. The fact that such perfect and
beautiful examples of the frail and fantastic forms which by night fill
the place taken by the humming-birds by day, in the steaming
tropical forest, have lived in the precincts of a London park, is
sufficient justification, if any be required, for their presence among
such practical and progressive surroundings. Readers of Kenelm
Chillingly, one of the latest and most extravagant of Bulwer Lytton’s
romances, may remember that one of the airy fancies of his youthful
and impossible heroine, is to keep pet butterflies in cages, and to
shed floods of tears over their untimely death. They manage things
better in the butterfly farm at the Zoo, where the brilliant insects,
after their brief day is over, pass by a kind of metempsychosis from
the catalogue of living to that of dead specimens, and figure anew in
the list of “additions to the collections of the Society.”
It would be difficult to picture a more elegant or more interesting
sight than the hatching of the butterfly-broods in the Insect House
during the first days of summer heat. The glass cases, filled with
damp moss and earth, and adorned with portions of tree-trunks or
plants suited to the habits of the moths, are peopled by these
exquisite and delicate creatures, as one after another separates itself
from the chrysalis-case in which it has been sleeping all the winter,
and, fluttering upwards with weak and uncertain movements,
exposes its beauties to the light. The wings of the largest kind, such
as the great orange-brown “Atlas” moth, are as wide as those of a
missel-thrush; and the great size of this and other species increases
the strange likeness to bird-forms which is so marked, even in the
smaller English hawk-moths. The giant moths of the tropics, unlike
the rest of the insect world, have faces and features not devoid of
expression. Some resemble birds; others cats. Some are covered
with long, soft plumage, like the feathers of the marabout, or the
plumes of swans. Others are wrapped in a silky mantle like an
Angora kitten, or clothed in ermine and sables. The depth and
softness of these downy mantles make the impulse to stroke them
suggest itself at once; yet when the head-keeper lifts them from the
branch on which they rest, as a falconer lifts his hawk, the feeling
that they are neither moths nor animals, but long-winged birds, is
equally irresistible. Form and texture suggest endless analogies with
the higher animals; but the scheme of colour is peculiar to the tribe
of which these are the most beautiful examples. In the Cecropian
silk-moths, for example, some five or six of which, at the time this
paper was written, were preening their feathery wings on the lichen-
covered bark of an ancient oak-trunk. The body seems thickly
wrapped in feathers, and, like the wings, is of an exquisite mottled
grey, the colour of the natural wool of the Cashmere goat. But the
legs, antennæ, and parts of the wings are boldly painted a rich red
madder-brown. The Indian moon-moth is perhaps the most delicate
in colouring of all. The wings are of the palest green, and as wide as
those of a swallow, the tint of the aqua-marine. The uniform faint
colour is only broken by a few crescent spots of a darker tint. But
the whole of the front edge of the wing is “bound” in velvet, of the
colour of dark-red wine. The body is wrapped in thick and downy
feathers of the purest white, from which the soft legs and feet
emerge, stained to match the claret edging of the wing. Across the
head, and lying back against the dark shoulders, are the fern-shaped
antennæ of pale-green. Thus, this lovely creature possesses but
three hues,—pale-green, claret-colour, and white; but these are so
graded and distributed, and so modified by the contrasted beauty of
the texture of the semi-transparent wing, the thick and downy body,
and the delicate flesh-like legs, that the creature seems rather the
realization of some painter’s dream than one among hundreds of
silk-producing insects. We once heard the generic difference
between angels and fairies stated with all the certainty which was
due to the youth of the speaker:—“Angels have birds’ wings, and
fairies have butterflies’ wings, of course!” was the indignant answer
to the difficulty raised. Imps, too, have bats’ wings. But the wings of
the moth have not yet been appropriated to the human embodiment
of the unseen denizens of the air. There is a softness and reserve of
colouring, and an uncertainty of outline in the moth’s wing, which
mark it at once as something distinct from the sharply cut, and
brilliantly coloured forms of their butterfly relations.
Perhaps the most brightly coloured moths which are raised in the
house are the Eacles regalis, which are covered with a net-work of
orange, rivalling in colour the inner flesh of a melon, on a ground of
greenish-grey; and the Eacles imperialis, in which an exquisite shade
of “old rose” invades and is lost in a rich cream-coloured ground.
Not the least beautiful among the giant moths is the splendid
creature from the cocoons of which the wild silks of India are
wound. This is a far larger and finer moth than that which produces
the Chinese tussur-silk. Its wings are “old gold” in colour, with two
large transparent eyes on each, fringed with rose-colour. These,
according to Hindoo superstition, are the finger-marks of the god
Vishnu, and the Tussur moth is, therefore, sacred to that deity. But it
is among the wild demon-worshipping Santhals that the Indian silk-
moth has its native home. In the boundless upland forests, the trees
on which it feeds are covered with thousands of the cocoons, which
are gathered by these wild tribes, and sold to the silk-winders of the
plains. Numbers of these fine cocoons line the cases at the Zoo,
each with living pupa inside. The cocoons are beautiful objects in
themselves, nearly the size of a walnut in the rind, and hanging by
stalks firmly twisted to the supporting twigs, like rows of melons.
Their colour varies through all shades of silvery or purplish-grey,
streaked all over, like the eggs of the yellow-hammer, with fine
irregular dark-purple lines. The silk threads of which they are woven
are flat, like tape, not round, like the ordinary floss-silk of Europe;
and it is to this flat and irregular form of the thread that the beauty
of woven tussur-silk is mainly due. It may be doubted whether the
cultivation of the Tussur moth will spread to the West, like that of
the common “silkworm.” But the time is not far distant when this,
and probably others of the fifty-nine species of silk-producing larvæ
which were exhibited in the Colonial and Indian Exhibition, will
become an additional source of wealth in the wide forest-regions of
our Indian Empire.
The area of the jungle forest in the Santhal country, in which grow
the trees whose leaves form the best food of these silkworms, is vast
beyond any probable use which the most enterprising silk-grower
conceives. “As far as the eye could reach from any rising ground,”
writes Mr. Thomas Wardle, in his History of the Growth of the Tussur
Silk Industry, “and for hundreds of square miles, there lay a forest in
which it seemed that any quantity of the tussur of the future might
be cultivated, and I think it is worthy of the attention of the
Government of India to encourage in every way a greatly increased
production, and not to be behind China in this respect, remembering
that when I showed how tussur-silk could be used, the demand
which sprang up was chiefly met by the greater quickness of the
Chinese.”
Not only the moths, but even the caterpillars, or larvæ of the
various silk-moths, are as beautiful as any fabric which is woven
from the glossy fibres of their cocoons. Let no one despise “worms
and creeping things” after once seeing these exquisitely formed and
coloured creatures. The larvæ of most may be seen in late July in
the Insect House, feeding on green leaves in the cases. The finest
are those of the Cecropian silk-moth; they are of a blue-green, with
a soft bloom like that on some succulent plant. The whole body is
clothed with alternate lines of turquoise and amber studs, specked
with black, polished and shining like jewels. Those that have spun
their cocoons are wrapped in jackets of light-brown silk, into which
strips of green leaves of the plum-tree are twisted for protection.
The Ailanthus silk-moth has a pale-grey larva, with little ornaments
in rows, shaped like the flowers of the stone-crop, and dotted with
black. The moth itself is strangely beautiful, fawn-coloured, with bold
wavy lines of black, grey, and pink. The Promethean silk-moth has a
larva of pale Cambridge blue, with yellow and crimson studs. Not
even the sea anemones in their native waters are more beautiful
than these fugitive forms assumed by the undeveloped silk-moths of
the East.
In their scheme of colour, the butterflies are to the moths what
the fabrics of Europe are to the webs of Cashmere or the carpets of
Daghestan. A score of the lovely swallow-tailed butterfly may often
be seen fluttering in their cage. The bottom of their glass mansion is
covered with short pieces of osier-stick, each one of which is pierced
up the centre with a tunnel, at the end of which lies the pupa of that
strange instance of protective mimicry, the hornet clear-wing.
Another case is full of the scarce pale variety of the swallow-tail, and
a third of the American swallow-tail, the female of which is black,
spangled with what seems a shining dust of sapphires. But perhaps
the most beautiful of all the butterfly broods is the swarm of Papilio
Cresphontes. At the time of hatching, the case is full of these lovely
butterflies, black above, with beaded spots of pale yellow; yellow
below, with beaded lines of black. When last seen by the writer,
some were flying from side to side of the cage; some had alighted,
or were in the act of alighting, and others on the moss at the bottom
were sipping the juices of ripe grapes.
Among the butterfly cages is a glass case which, since its inmates
first found their way to the Zoo, has never failed to excite the utmost
interest and curiosity. On the floor of the box, partly sheltered by a
few green plants, are ten or a dozen gold buttons, with a red-gold
centre, on a lighter gold setting, edged by a round, semi-transparent
rim. If watched attentively, the buttons presently move about on
invisible legs, and perhaps one suddenly splits, puts out a pair of
wings, and flies. These astonishing beetles, which are at present
unnamed, are from Ceylon. Above, they exactly resemble an
embossed gold sleeve-button, with a rim of yellow talc. Laid on their
backs, the under-side of a golden beetle appears, surrounded with
the same semi-transparent rim. Trap-door spiders also flourish in the
Insect House, and have made several caves, with most ingenious
doors, in a large piece of rotten wood with rugged lichen-covered
bark. The doors are quite irregular in shape, made to fit the surface
of the hole in which the spider lives, and are of all sizes, from that of
a walnut-shell to a pea. The door exactly fits the orifice, however
irregular its shape, and is so cleverly covered with pieces of wood
and lichen woven into the fabric, that it exactly resembles the
surrounding bark; and even a prying tit might omit to probe it with
its bill.
The one hideous and repulsive creature in this good company is
the great tarantula spider. It is like a long-legged, hairy crab, quite
seven inches from claw to claw, with enormous brown poison fangs
like a beak. Two of these spiders, discovered in a tent at Assouan,
occupied by officers of the Heavy Camel Corps, put the whole of the
inmates to flight in their pyjamas, and the only wonder is that they
ever ventured to return before daylight. There is something
strangely repulsive in this low type of life, which nevertheless makes
a prey of such beautiful and highly-developed animals as humming-
birds, and even the small and fragile quadrupeds of the tropical
forest.
 PATTERNS ON LIVING ANIMALS.

Early in the spring of 1893, the Marquis of Hamilton brought with

him from Trinidad a number of little fish, less in size than a half-
grown minnow, which were presented to the Zoological Society, and
were to be seen at Easter swimming in a glass bowl, among a thin
growth of water weeds, in the warm chamber in which the tropical
moths and butterflies are hatched.
Being small and elegant, they have a long and ugly scientific
name, the Girardinus Guppyi. In the absence of a label, the writer
mistook them for the gudgeon, which form the food of the more
rapacious fishes, and was about to suggest that they would be
interesting material for an experiment with the electric eels, when a
ray of sunlight flashing through the bowl revealed the astonishing
fact that these tiny fishes possessed beauties of ornament not
exceeded in kind by any of the most exquisite birds of the tropics.
Each of the little creatures, though so frail and so delicately
formed that its body offered a scarcely greater obstacle to the
passage of the sunlight than the water in which it swam, was
decorated on either side by one, or sometimes two, of those
exquisite ornaments seen in the greatest perfection in the train of
the peacock, which are perhaps best described as the “peacock-eye.”
It was no mere spot, lying in a ring of a different colour, such as
decorates the sides of a trout or salmon, but a perfectly-developed
peacock-gem, lying in its gorgeous rings of blue, green, and gold,
equally rich and dark in tint, and even more striking from its contrast
with the colourless and semi-transparent body of the creature it
adorned. The analogy with the pattern on the peacock’s tail was
even more complete than that which a first glance disclosed; for on
many of the fish a third or rudimentary eye appeared, fainter and
elongated, like a smudge of wet colour, and corresponding exactly
with the gradation or evolutionary process of ornament, which
Charles Darwin noted in the side-feathers of the peacock-train. This
wonderful decoration, which was assumed, like the brilliant red and
emerald of the English sticklebacks, for the period of courtship only,
disappears later in the year; and the creatures abide in plain clothes
till next spring. But the character of the ornament they wear
suggests a further and separate interest, beyond that which their
beauty naturally claims. Pattern, by which we mean the repetition of
certain and regular forms, so as to produce an ornament which
pleases the eye without making any demands on the mind, is by no
means a common form of natural decoration in the higher animals.
Contrasts of brilliant colours, as in the plumage of the birds of
paradise, and of the parrots and lorys, are the usual and beautiful
adornments of birds. Any visitor to the cases of a good natural
history collection, will find a hundred instances of this form of
decoration for one of true pattern. Even the wings of butterflies,
though spangled with colours in dots, lines, and spots, are usually
devoid of pattern, though the juxtaposition of a number of the same
species would instantly produce the effect of pattern. But that effect,
so far as it is given in a single individual, is, as a rule, only due to
the fact that the creature is itself symmetrical, and that the lines and
markings on one side of the body are repeated upon the other. The
stripes upon a tiger’s skin, for instance, though in the nature of
ornament, are not a pattern, though a number of tigers’ skins laid
side by side might produce to the eye the effect of pattern. The
patterns themselves are also few in number; and these limited and
favourite forms of enrichment are applied indiscriminately, and with
a certain indifference to congruity of species, yet with unfailing
success in the result, to the most widely-different forms in the
animal creation. Take, for example, the most complex, and perhaps
the most beautiful of all, natural ornaments, which appears in the
“eyes” in the peacock’s tail. The same pattern, with slight variations,
is found, not only on the feathers of the beautiful grouse-like
Polyplectron of Malacca, though modified, as Darwin noted, by the
white edging, which makes it even more conspicuous than the
bronze circle round the peacock-eye, but also in the peacock-
pheasant, and the Ocelated Turkey of Honduras. In this splendid
bird, the “eyes” are placed in a row at the end of the tail-feathers,
and upon some of the upper tail-coverts, and are rimmed with gold.
The same pattern, by a leap from an order of birds not distantly
connected, appears in undiminished beauty in the little fish from
Trinidad; and with an almost incredible difference of subject and
sameness in effect, in the peacock-butterfly and eyed hawk-moth of
England, in the emperor-moth, and a number of allied insects; and
lastly, with a startling resemblance, in the centre of the beautiful
peacock iris, which is now cultivated in English gardens. It would,
perhaps, not be difficult to add to the instances of repetition of this
particular pattern which we have given, by a careful survey of the
specimens exhibited in the Natural History Museum at South
Kensington. But the fact of the repetition of the “peacock-eye” as
ornament in the case of birds, fishes, moths, butterflies, and lastly of
a common and beautiful flower, will sufficiently illustrate the fact to
which we draw attention. The pattern, if less elaborate and exact in
reproduction when found among the moths and butterflies, is an
“impressionist” rendering of the same scheme, and if it were the
reproduction of some human hand, would leave no doubt as to the
identity of the motive and idea in each. The remaining natural
patterns, even though of less complex form, may almost be counted
on the fingers of the hand, and are applied with the same careless
profusion to the adornment of creatures, like and unlike, without
distinction, though the range is in most cases far more limited than
in that of the peacock-eye. The most perfect form of the cup-and-
ball pattern, which is seen in the feathers of the Argus pheasant,
seems only to reappear on the wings of the Brahma moth, and of
the eyed tortoise, though in one or two other small tortoises the
effect of the ball ornament is produced by an actual embossing of
the shell. Yet even in this case, not only is the form of the pattern
reproduced, but also the beautiful brown colouring, which, by its
soberness and exquisite gradation, produces the effect of low relief
in monochrome. The wave-line, the spot, the scale-pattern, the bar-
pattern, and, in rare instances, a chequer or diaper in black and
white, almost exhaust the list of other natural patterns, and these,
like the peacock-eye, recur in non-allied species in exactly the same
arrangement, not only of form, but of colour. A most effective spot-
pattern is that in which a rich chestnut ground is covered with
minute white or cream-coloured spots. The result is most rich and
beautiful, and it seems to be reserved for use in highly-decorated
creatures of any class or family. It is seen at its best on the breast of
the lovely harlequin-duck, in which the whole surface shines like
enamel. But exactly the same pattern in the same colours appears
on the neck of such a widely-different species as the chestnut-eared
finch of Australia; and with the order of colour reversed, under the
wings of the bar-breasted finch, both of which may be seen in the
Parrot House at the Zoological Gardens. In the smaller wing-feathers
of the Argus pheasant, this spot-pattern is reproduced on almost the
same minute scale as on the harlequin-duck and the little finches.
Then by a sudden change it is found on the back of the larvæ of the
Gallium hawk-moth, a chestnut-coloured insect, with a row of minute
white spots down the middle of its back, and two rows of rather
larger white spots, one on each side. The larvæ of the spurge hawk-
moth, of the white-satin moth, and of the sycamore dagger-moth,
also show it. Among butterflies, the Salatura Melanippus has a
border of white spots on chestnut ground round the edges of its
wings; and the same arrangement may be seen on a shell—some
kind of Gastropoda, if we remember rightly—which is “commonly
observed” on cottage mantelpieces. The “scale-pattern” is generally
due in the case of birds to the natural shape of the feathers, and not
to surface-pattern. A good example is the neck of the Amherst
pheasant, in which the feathers are scale-shaped, and being edged
with black, produce a beautiful pattern, and the neck of the golden
pheasant, in which the corresponding feathers have square ends,
and the black edging merely falls into parallel lines. The perfect
rectangular diaper pattern is extremely rare in birds, but not
uncommon in the larvæ of moths and butterflies. It is seen in
perfection on the backs of the great northern diver and its relations;
and in a faint reproduction on the wings of the wood-leopard moth.
A very elegant and decorative ornament is the “wave-line” pattern.
This, like the chestnut ground and white spot, is constantly
reproduced in the same colours, black on grey, or grey on black. It
appears on the side of the wild duck, on Swinhoe’s pheasant, in
which bird it is the main form of ornament, on the neck of the grass-
parakeet, on the sand-grouse, on several common species of iris,
and on the wings of the Brahma moths, surrounding the ball
ornament to which we have referred. The inference to be drawn
from these coincidences must be left to practical zoologists. But the
fact that natural patterns, as applied to animals and plants, while at
times showing the utmost elaboration of design, are so limited in
number, and applied with so little modification in colour or form to
birds, fishes, insects, and plants alike, seems an inviting subject for
inquiry.
Meantime it would be a charming amusement to any one who
desires a new and not too exacting intellectual interest in a visit to
the Zoological Gardens, to go from the aviaries to the wild-fowl
ponds, and from the pheasants in their runs to the finches in their
cages in the Parrot House, and make a complete list of the
possessors of each form of these distinct and arbitrary animal
patterns. By so doing, he would incidentally secure an acquaintance
with the most beautiful of all the birds, for the possessors of these
ornaments are generally among the most elaborately marked of any
of their species. The list given above is far from exhaustive, and as
the first, and often the most pleasing, part of these minor inquiries
into nature consists in the collection and classifying of likenesses, it
offers an attraction as great as any obvious inducements to
observation in the Society’s collection. Some day we shall perhaps
see in the cases at South Kensington a collection of examples of the
repetition of ornament, as well as of the evolution of ornament in
nature. The origin of the first is now explained. But on what
hypothesis can we account for the second?
The observation of these patterns should extend throughout the
year if it is to be complete. The typical pheasants are only in perfect
plumage in winter, and these delicate ornaments are much affected
by the physical condition of the wearer. In the fish, as we have seen,
they almost entirely disappear after the bodily vigour of the spring
season has departed. In late summer and early autumn the
pheasants and peacocks are moulting; the tropical moths, on the
other hand, which have such beautiful analogies with the bird
plumage, are hatching out in May. The pretty little tropical finches
take far less time to moult than some of the larger birds, or are less
affected in plumage, and the minute but accurate reproductions of
the patterns on the wood-duck, wild duck, and jungle-fowl which
appear on their diminutive bodies may be seen at almost any season
in the Parrot House. The flower gardening at the Zoo is now
maintained at so high a pitch of elaboration and beauty, that it
would not be difficult to provide instances of animal pattern in beds
of peacock iris, and of other plants which reproduce the less
elaborate but equally distinct forms of pattern of which examples
have been given above.
 THE GIRAFFE’S OBITUARY.

The winter of the year 1892, like the days of pestilence before the
walls of Troy, was fatal both to man and beast. Even the carefully
tended inmates of the Zoological Society’s Gardens did not escape;
and as the new year opened with the death within a week of “Sally,”
most human and most intelligent of apes, and of her neighbour
“Tim,” the silver gibbon, who was almost as great a favourite of the
London public as the educated chimpanzee, so the spring saw the
death of the two beautiful giraffes, the sole survivors left in the
collection. The experience which the Society has had in maintaining
its stock of these interesting creatures has not, however, been
altogether discouraging. Since the first four specimens were brought
to England in 1836, no less than seventeen fawns have been born in
the Gardens, and many of these lived to grow up. But the stock
gradually diminished, until in 1866 two were burnt to death in their
stable, and a third died of old age, leaving only the pair now lost.
 The Last Giraffe. From a photograph by Gambier
Bolton.

The time of their death, unfortunately, coincided with the

complete interruption of the ancient trade in wild animals up the
Valley of the Nile by the Mahdi’s occupation of the Soudan, a trade
as old as the days of Solomon, never organized, often interrupted
for centuries, yet always ready to spring up again, and always
dependent for its rarest products on the free navigation of the river
of Egypt. Giraffes—which, not excepting the hippopotamus, have
most excited the imagination of European capitals after the long
intervals in which they have remained unseen by the nations of the
West—seem always to have found their way hither from the land of
the Pharaohs. The first seen in Europe since the “tertiary epoch” was
obtained from Alexandria by Julius Cæsar, and exhibited at the
Circensian Games to crowds who expected, from its name,
“camelopard,” to find in it a combination of the size of a camel and
the ferocity of a panther. Pliny, who described it, echoed the public
disappointment. “It was as quiet,” he wrote, “as a sheep.” The trade
probably reached its maximum after it became the fashion to exhibit
combats of wild beasts at Rome; yet even then giraffes seem to
have been scarce in the popular shows, though Pompey could
exhibit five hundred lions at a time, and the Emperor Titus, at the
dedication of his new theatre, caused the slaughter of five thousand
wild beasts. Either the number of wild animals in the provinces must
have been beyond anything since known, or the Roman Governors
must have used their despotic powers freely to oblige their friends.
No doubt they did this. Cælius, Cicero’s gossiping correspondent,
says, when writing to him in Cilicia—“In nearly every letter I have
written to you about panthers. It is a great shame. Pray send to
Pamphylia, where most are said to be taken. You have only to give
an order, and the thing is done. You know I hate trouble, while you
like it, and yet you will not do this, which is no trouble. I have sent
men to look after them and bring them here.”
 Despots are the best collectors; and from the fall of the Roman
Empire till the arrival of those placed in the Zoological Gardens in
1836, the rare appearances of the giraffe in Europe were in each
case due to the munificence of Eastern Sultans and Pashas. The
Prince of Damascus gave one to the Emperor Frederick II. in 1215;
and the Soldan of Egypt presented another to Lorenzo the
Magnificent, which became the pet of Florence, and used to be
allowed to walk in the streets, and take the presents of fruit and
cakes extended to it from the balconies. From this time the giraffe
was not seen in Europe until, in 1827, the Pasha of Egypt sent four
to Constantinople, Venice, England, and France respectively. The
giraffe sent to England was in bad health, and soon died; but the
Parisians went wild with excitement over the Pasha’s present. It had
spent the winter at Marseilles, and throve there on the milk of the
cows which the Pasha had sent over for its use from Egypt. The
Prefect of Marseilles had the arms of France embroidered on its
body-cloth, and it entered Paris escorted by a Darfour negro,
Hassan, an Arab, a Marseilles groom, a mulatto interpreter, the
Prefect of Marseilles himself, and a professor from the Jardin des
Plantes, while troops kept back the crowd. Thousands came every
day to see it, and men and women wore gloves, gowns, and
waistcoats of the colour of its spots. But the successful expedition by
which, in 1836, M. Thibaut procured a stock of giraffes for the
Zoological Society, owed nothing to the patronage of the Pasha of
Egypt, beyond permission to enter the Soudan. The caravan left the
Nile near Dongola, and thence passed on to the desert of Kordofan.
There M. Thibaut engaged the services of the Arab sword-hunters,
whose skill and courage were of such service to Sir Samuel Baker in
his expedition thirty years later to the sources of the Nile tributaries;
and in two days they sighted the giraffes. A female with a fawn was
first pursued by the Arabs, who killed the animal with their swords,
and next day tracked and caught the fawn in the thorny mimosa
scrub. For four days the young giraffe was secured by a cord, the
end of which was held by one of the Arabs; at the end of that time it
was perfectly tame, and trotted after the caravan with the female
camels which had been brought to supply it with milk. The Arabs
were excellent nurses, and taught the young creature to drink milk
by putting their fingers into its mouth and so inducing it to suck.
Four others which M. Thibaut caught died in the cold weather in the
desert. But he replaced three of these, and brought four, including
that first taken, down the Nile to Alexandria, and then by ship to
Malta. “Providence alone,” he wrote, “enabled me to surmount these
difficulties.”
The Report of the Council of the Society as to the progress of this
great undertaking is worth quoting in full.
“The Council are now (April 1836) looking forward with interest to
the completion of an attempt in which the Society is engaged for the
importation of several giraffes, which they hope to see added to the
Society’s collection in a very few weeks. In the earlier days of the
Society’s existence, the acquisition of this singular and rare animal
was among the most important objects to which the attention of the
Council was directed, and they made many inquiries as to the
probable means of effecting it, and then named a price which would
be paid for one or two of them, on their being delivered, in good
health, at the Society’s Gardens.
“In 1833 the inquiries were again resumed, through Mr. Bourchier
of Malta, to whose valuable aid on numerous occasions the Society
is almost incessantly indebted. Through his intervention, and the
kindness of Colonel Campbell, her Majesty’s Consul-General for
Egypt, an arrangement was made during the close of that year with
M. Thibaut, who was then at Cairo, and he agreed to proceed to
Nubia for the purpose of procuring giraffes on the Society’s behalf.
The terms of his agreement imposed upon him the whole risk of the
undertaking, previously to the delivery of the animals in Malta, and it
was not until his landing them in that island that he was entitled to
receive the stipulated price, which was at a fixed rate for each
individual, diminishing in proportion to the number he should bring
with him.”
After a brief reference to the capture of the animals, the report
states that he reached Malta in safety with his valuable charges,
three males and a female, on November 21, 1834. “Having thus
fulfilled his engagement, M. Thibaut became entitled to receive the
stipulated sum of £700, which has accordingly been paid him. But
the Council has considered it so desirable to avail themselves of his
experience with respect to these valuable animals, that they have
arranged with him for the continuation of his services until their
arrival in England. For the conveyance of the giraffes to this country,
the Council have availed themselves of the Manchester, a steam
vessel of great size and power, which proceeded to Lisbon at the
beginning of the present month, having been specially engaged for
the service of Prince Ferdinand of Portugal. From Lisbon the
Manchester is to proceed to Malta, whence she will return to
London. Her arrival may be expected before the end of May. For the
conveyance of the animals to England £1000 will be paid, and the
necessary fittings for the accommodation of the giraffes will be
prepared at the cost of the Society in her Majesty’s dockyard at
Malta, orders to that effect having been sent thither by the Lords of
the Admiralty.” Thus the giraffes came to this country under
circumstances almost as imposing as those which marked the
reception of that sent by the Pasha of Egypt to Paris. They travelled
in one of the first steam vessels of the mercantile marine, one which
had just conveyed a prince, and their comfort was provided for by
the Admiralty and the Royal Dockyards.
All four were safely lodged in the Zoological Gardens on May 24,
1836, an event which the Council of the Society justly claimed as
highly creditable to its resources. One died in the following winter,
but the rest continued in excellent health, and became the greatest
public favourites in the menagerie.
At the time of their arrival the largest was then about 11 ft. high,
the height of an adult male being 12 ft. at the shoulder and 18 ft. at
the head. For many years, as we have said, the giraffes throve and
multiplied. They readily took to European food, and ate hay and
fresh grass from the tall racks with which their stables were fitted.
Onions and sugar were their favourite delicacies, and in search of
sugar they would follow their keeper, and slip their long prehensile
tongues into his hands or pockets. But they always retained a liking
for eating flowers, a reminiscence, perhaps, of the days when their
parents feasted on mimosa blossoms in the desert. Some years ago,
one was seen to stretch its neck over the railings, and to delicately
nip off an artificial rose in a young lady’s hat. They were most
affectionate creatures, and, as M. Thibaut noticed when in charge of
them in Upper Egypt, would shed tears if they missed their
companions or their usual attendants. But the development of the
lachrymal ducts, which enables the giraffe to express its emotions in
this very human fashion, is less obvious than the wonderful size and
beauty of the eyes themselves, which are far larger than those of
any other quadruped. On May 27, 1840, four years after their arrival,
the female giraffe bore and afterwards reared a fine fawn, and it
was not until they had been eleven years in the menagerie that the
death occurred of one of the pair of males which had survived the
first year in England. In 1849 two more males and one female
giraffe were waiting the Society’s pleasure at Cairo, and the stock
continued to increase by births in the menagerie. In 1867 the straw
in the giraffes’ house caught fire at night, and a female and her fawn
were suffocated. A sum of £545 was claimed as compensation for
their loss, and duly paid to the Society by the “Sun” Fire Insurance
Office, probably the first claim of the kind paid in Europe. For
curiosity, now that we have no living giraffe left in England, we
would suggest a comparison of the beautifully-stuffed giraffe heads
in Mr. Rowland Ward’s collection in Piccadilly, with the innumerable
specimens of other large game, such as wapiti, buffaloes,
hippopotami, or rhinoceros, which fill the rooms. In all these, the
size and character of the eye has been carefully reproduced, though
no art could preserve the lustre and softness of the eye of the giraffe
in life. While the Mahdi’s power remains unbroken at Khartoum,
there is little probability that the Soudan traders will be able to
supply any to occupy the empty house in Regent’s Park. Yet the
southern range of these beautiful creatures, though it has greatly
receded, still extends to the North Kalahari Desert, and to part of
Khama’s country, where the “camel-thorn,” as the Boers call the
giraffe-acacia, abounds. There the great chief carefully preserves the
giraffes, and allows only his own people, or his own white friends, to
kill them. The other point at which the giraffe country is still
accessible to European hunters or naturalists is Somaliland, and the
“unknown horn” of Africa. This district is so far accessible, that
parties of English sportsmen yearly penetrate it from Berbera,
making Aden their starting-point from British territory. But from the
point of view of those who would delay as long as possible the
extermination of the large game of Africa, the Dervish empire is not
altogether matter for regret. No doubt the Arabs will still kill giraffes
to make their shields from the hides, as they have done for
centuries; but for the present the Soudan giraffes will be protected
from raids like that in which those in the Kalahari Desert were
destroyed in hundreds, because the price of “sjambok whips” had
doubled. The Mahdi is, in fact, the involuntary protector of the wild
animals of Central Africa, to which Sir Samuel Baker bore
unconscious testimony when he lamented that, “owing to British
interference in Egypt, where the ‘courbatch’ (hippopotamus whip)
has been abolished, the hippopotamus will remain undisturbed on
the great White Nile, monarch of the river upon which fifteen British
steamers were flying when the Soudan was abandoned by the
despotic order of Great Britain, and handed back to savagedom and
wild beasts.”
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