44 MR. OGILBY'S MONOGRAPH 



characters, moreover, upon which it is established — the form and direction of the horns, 

 neither compressed and crescent-shaped, as in the Goat, nor prismatic and spiral, as in 

 the Ram ; nor smooth, round, and lunated, as in the Ox ; the absence of a beard on the 

 chin, and a dewlap on the throat, &c. — are in reality so many negative traits which distin- 

 guish all other hollow-horned Ruminants from the Oxen, the Sheep, and the Goats, respect- 

 ively, but which Hmit no positive group, and which consequently cannot be received as the 

 definitions of a natural genus. They tell you what the animal is not, not what it is ; and 

 the natural consequence has been that every Ruminant which could not be immediately 

 associated with one or other of the old genera, was, as a matter of course, considered to 

 be an Antelope, without the shghtest reference to any positive, natural, or even artificial 

 characters it might possess ; so that in a short time this latter group became a kind of 

 zoological refuge for the destitute, an asylum for the reception of all vagrant Ruminants 

 which could not produce satisfactory testimonials of their consanguinity to some one or 

 other of the better known genera. Bos, Ovis, or Capra. Thus it was that the most in- 

 congruous forms and opposite characters came to be mixed up and associated in the 

 same genus, till, independently of its unphilosophical structure and total want of cha- 

 racter, whether natural or artificial, the practical inconvenience arising from its undue 

 extension — for it contains at the present moment upwards of sixty species, or above 

 treble the number included in all the other three genera together — forced zoologists to 

 devise the partial remedies of which I have already detailed the history, and which all 

 proceeded upon the same common principle, that namely of dividing the genus Antilope 

 into such subordinate groups as were conceived best calculated to obviate its inconsis- 

 tencies, and approximate those species which most nearly resembled one another in 

 habit and conformation. 



The process employed for this purpose was purely analytical, and thence, as I con- 

 ceive, arose the radical defects of the whole system, and its failure to accomplish the 

 object which it proposed. Instead of commencing by a diUgent study of the natural 

 and influential characters of individual species, and afterwards proceeding to generalize 

 their observations, according to the true principles of inductive philosophy, natm-alists 

 began at the wrong end, and contented themselves with analyzing the contents of the 

 principal group. This process necessarily involves the supposition that the group in 

 question is a natural genus, a fallacy for which it is difficult to account in the present 

 state of science, but which is tacitly assumed by every writer on the subject, even whilst 

 they confess that it has not a single character either exclusively appropriate or even 

 common to the generality of its component species. Far, therefore, from being a natural, 

 it is not even entitled to be considered an artificial group ; it would be impossible ever 

 to arrive at such a group by following the sjmthetic method of investigation, the only 

 IcE^itimate and philosophical path of induction : the so-called genus Antilope is in fact no 

 group at all ; for it has no positive or absolute characters whatever, and the various 

 attempts which have been made to invest it with this distinction, have all proved signal 



