42 MR. OGILBY'S MONOGRAPH 



duction of no fewer than sixteen ; three of the doubtful species, likewise, rest upon his au- 

 thority alone, and I cannot at the present moment give him credit for throwing any addi- 

 tional light upon more than three or four of the remaining species. Yet, notwithstand- 

 ing all these disadvantages. Colonel Smith's treatise has not been without its use in 

 promoting the study of the Ruminantia, and the development of their natural characters ; 

 it is more copious in details than any other work on the subject ; it contains the results 

 of long experience, though unfortunately the author does not appear to have thoroughly 

 digested his extensive knowledge ; but it requires to be read with caution, and the spe- 

 cific characters can seldom be received with implicit confidence. 



Colonel Smith is, as far as I am aware, the only zoologist who has proposed the for- 

 mation of new and distinct genera from among the ample but discordant materials of the 

 Antilopine group ; but, considering his long and famihar acquaintance with the subject, 

 his attempts are by no means so judicious or successful as might have been expected. 

 His genus Catoblepas, for instance, has precisely the same essential characters as the 

 Bubalus, the Caama, and the Sassaby, yet all these animals are placed in a diiferent 

 genus, and associated with species to which they bear no natural affinity. The proposed 

 genus Damalis again, is composed of species which absolutely have not a single charac- 

 ter in common, besides those which belong to them as hollow-horned Ruminants ; so 

 that Colonel Smith is himself obliged to confess " that it is very difficult to establish 

 characters sufficiently general to justify the proposal of this new genus'." Those which 

 he has selected are purely arbitrary, and without the slightest influence on the habits 

 and ceconomy of the animals ; they are assumed principally from the comparative stature, 

 the elevation of the withers, the cancellated structure of the osseous core of the horns, 

 and other similar attributes, and are all equally vague and unimportant. In a group so 

 loosely constructed, and so arbitrarily defined, we need not be surprised to find the most 

 opposite and dissimilar species united. Thus we have the Bubalus and Caama, distin- 

 guished by their naked muzzles and lachrymal glands, placed in contiguity with the 

 Antilope suturosa of Otto, which possesses neither one nor other of these characters ; 

 the Antilope areas, with horns in both sexes, and no lachrymal sinus, is situated be- 

 tween the Sassabij, which differs from it in the latter character, and the Koodoo, which 

 is destitute of the former ; the Nyl-ghau of India, with lachrymal glands and horns in 

 the male sex only, is approximated to the Eland of the Cape, which differs from it in 

 both these characters ; and finally, to complete the confusion so prevalent throughout 

 this ill-imagined group, we find among its species the Antilope suturosa of Otto, to 

 which Colonel Smith himself attributes the same characters, and which Dr. Lichtenstein 

 and other distinguished observers who have had opportunities of comparing the original 

 specimens, assert to be absolutely identical with the Addax, as it certainly is with the 

 Antilope naso-maculata of De Blainville, though the two latter names are placed in two 



' Griffith's Trans. ' R&gne Animal,' iv. 345. 



