Okapi

Of all wild animals, the okapi* is considered the shyest, the most subtle. The first white man who ever tracked and shot one and brought back the skin and skeleton has arrived in Manhattan, on his way to lecture before the British Association for the Advancement of Science, soon to meet in Toronto. Dr. Cuthbert Christy, naturalist, explorer, investigator of tropical diseases, has told of his long okapi hunt in a book which will be published in the U. S. --Big Game and Pygmies: Experiences of a Naturalist in Central African Forests in Quest of the Okapi. Necessarily it was a long hunt; one must win the friendship of the Little People, the Pygmies, before one can start to track an okapi. The Pygmies-- last remnants of the forest people which Stanley discovered -- are suspicious, shoot poisoned arrows. Dr. Christy journeyed to the Ituri Forest on the Equator, west of Lake Albert and overlooked by the lofty snow-range of the Mountains of the Moon. There he lived for weeks in one of the Pygmy camps. After many disappointments, he at last saw a beam of sunshine fall upon the chocolate-colored back of his rare quarry. "Crack!" went his Winchester. The okapi died in great agony. Excepting an elephant-hunter who had previously shot an okapi but failed to preserve the skin, all other Europeans have depended on the natives' clever trapping. An okapi was once brought to the Antwerp Zoological Gardens, but soon died. There is a mounted specimen in the American Museum of Natural History, Manhattan.

*An okapi is about the size of a large stag, but hornless. Its head tapers to a point, its lips are soft and flexible, which indicates that it feeds upon foliage. In its upper jaw it has no teeth. Its tail resembles that of an ass. The coloring of the okapi is remarkable; cheeks and jaws are yellowish-white; forehead and muzzle chestnut red; large, ass-like ears red fringed with black. The neck, shoulders, barrel and back vary from sepia and black to deep red; the belly is blackish; the tail bright red with a black tuft. The hind quarters and hind and fore legs are pale cream color, but marked with purple-black stripes, which give a zebra-like effect.