50 MR. OGILBY'S MONOGRAPH 



partment of literature — were consulted with the greatest advantage, and a copious list 

 of references and synonyms collected, of which the principal will be given under their 

 proper heads in the subsequent parts of this monograph ; but it was chiefly from private 

 sources, from the information communicated by colonial gentlemen and officers, the 

 greater number of them keen sportsmen, and well acquainted with the large game of 

 Africa and India, that I learned the characteristic habits of the different species, and 

 was enabled to generalize and perceive their relation to pecuhar modifications of organic 

 structure. 



I now proceed to the exposition of these essential characters, their influence upon the 

 habits and ceconomy of the animals, and their application to a natural and philosophical 

 generic distribution of the hollow-horned Ruminants in general. 



IV. Inquiry into the essential characters of the Ruminantia, and the principles of their 



generic distribution. 



I have often, during the course of the last ten years, both in conversation and in 

 print, before this Society and elsewhere, taken occasion to insist upon that primary, but, 

 I regret to say, neglected law of classification, that no generic characters should be admitted 

 but such as are founded upon the necessary relations that subsist between the organic struc- 

 ture of animals and their habits and osconomy. If zoology is to be considered as a legiti- 

 mate branch of science its principles must be founded upon some more permanent and 

 influential relations than the trivial and evanescent characters too commonly employed 

 to distinguish genera, and which have hitherto made it a barren system of empiricism, 

 a dry catalogue of concrete facts, without any of those higher and more refined general- 

 izations and inductions which constitute the soul and essence of true philosophy. All 

 philosophy is the knowledge, not of simple facts, but of their relations ; and philosophical 

 zoology I would define as " The science which treats of the relations which subsist between 

 the organic structure of animals and their habits and ceconomy." This branch of zoology 

 is still in its infancy ; the descriptive part of the science has indeed made rapid progress 

 within the last half century, and still continues to advance ; but it is a very subsidiary 

 department, and the vague, arbitrary, and unsettled nature of its principles has given rise 

 to all the various artificial and conflicting systems which have so much embarrassed the 

 science, and which depend merely on the caprice of their authors. The true natural 

 system is that which classifies the relations of the animal kingdom according to the 

 great law above expounded : it is the only system whose principles are fixed and immu- 

 table, whose characters are impressed with the stamp of Creative Wisdom, and can be 

 altered neither by the caprice of man nor the freaks of accident. To the development 

 of these great philosophical principles I have invariably directed the chief part of my 

 attention in all my zoological pursuits ; I now proceed to apply them to the classification 

 of the hollow-horned Ruminants, and I could not possibly desire a more favourable 



