THE BEATRIX ANTELOPE 137 



is most singular, for instead of being dark above and 

 lighter below (the usual arrangement) the disposition 

 of the tints is exactly reversed ; like the young of 

 the grison, and the honey ratel at all ages, the 

 beatrix has the darker hue on the lower portion of 

 the body. The typical oryx coloration, rich 

 enough in the gemsbok though paling in the beisa, 

 is seen in the beatrix actually blanching to white. 



The beatrix antelope appears to have first been 

 described by Thomas Pennant in 1781, from two 

 drawings then in the British Museum; in attempting 

 to figure the species in his ''History of Quadrupeds" 

 some mistake seems to have arisen, the heavily-built 

 animal with white limbs, and eye-streak barely 

 extending to the jaw, indicating a beisa antelope 

 rather than the present species. 1 Pennant further 

 styles his figure "leucoryx antelope;" it is not, 

 however, the leucoryx of modern writers, as shown 

 plainly by the uniformly coloured neck and the 

 straightness of the horns. The original specimens 

 were kept by Sultan Houssein, Shah of Persia, in a 

 park eight leagues from the capital, and were figured 

 from life in 1712 by order of Sir John Lock, agent 

 of the East India Company at Ispahan. 2 



The present species was redescribed in 1857 by 



1. Similarly Dr. Shaw compares Pennant's figure to the pasan or 

 Egyptian antelope (probably =. beisa or gemsbok -or both), "had the figure 

 alone of this animal been given, without its description, one would almost 

 be tempted to suppose it a bad representation of the former species." 



2. An interesting old oil painting of a beatrix oryx is still preserved 

 in the Royal College of Surgeons' Museum. 



