322 AFRICAN GAME ANIMALS 



They range over the whole of Africa and Asia, including 

 Japan and the larger Malay Islands to southern Europe, 

 and over North America from northern Mexico to Greenland. 

 Geologically, the family ranged from the Lower Miocene 

 to the present time. The most ancient types are repre- 

 sented to-day by the antelopes of Africa, the bulk of which 

 have been found as far back as the Miocene in Eurasia. No 

 remote ancestral types are known. The oldest forms geo- 

 logically, the Tragocerince, had flattened horns resembling 

 those of the goat. Other Miocene species of almost equal 

 antiquity were the Egocerine forms allied to the sable and 

 the oryx, as well as several extinct genera of the Tragela- 

 phine or bushbuck type. In expressing the relationships 

 of the subfamilies of African antelope by diagram, we have 

 assumed that the sable and its allies represent the most 

 ancient group, owing chiefly to their more primitive skull 

 characters. As no mere linear arrangement of groups is 

 satisfactory, the diagram has been resorted to to express 

 our ideas of the relationships more clearly, and we wish to 

 emphasize the fact that the linear arrangement we have 

 actually adopted is unsatisfactory and is merely adopted 

 because there had to be some kind of linear arrangement, 

 and this was, perhaps, a trifle less unsatisfactory than any 

 other. The arrangement in the diagram is based on a study 

 of the affinities of the recent species as shown by their skull 

 structure and horn characters. The Bubalincs are an ab- 

 errant group which do not fit in well with the characters 

 shown by the others and may represent some of the most 

 ancient types. The Bovincs, or oxen and buff^aloes, although 

 one of the youngest or most modern groups, has characters 

 which ally it most closely to the very oldest genera. The 



