NA TURE 



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THURSDAY, MARCH 28, 1901. 



THE BOOK OF ANTELOPES. 

 The Book of Antelopes. By P. L. Sclater and O. Thomas 

 4 vols. Illustrated. (London : Porter, 1894-1900.) 

 Price, 13/. lOJ. net. 



IT was the intention of the late Sir Victor Brooke, who 

 for many years of his life devoted a large amount of 

 time and attention to the study of the ruminants gener- 

 ally, to write an illustrated monograph of that interesting 

 and beautiful, although ill-defined, section of them com- 

 monly known as antelopes. And with this end in view 

 he instructed the late Mr. Joseph Wolf to prepare a* 

 number of coloured sketches of these animals, which were 

 in due course transferred to stone, printed off, and 

 coloured by hand. A considerable bulk of manuscript 

 was also written by Sir Victor ; but, for some reason or 

 another, the work was never brought to anything like 

 completion during his lifetime. 



And perhaps it was fortunate for science that the_ 

 material thus accumulated was left in this unfinished 

 state. For the opening-up of Somaliland and East 

 Africa in general, as well as continued exploration in 

 the heart of the continent, have of late years made us 

 acquainted with quite a number of antelopes which were 

 altogether unknown, or but very imperfectly known, to 

 Sir Victor Brooke, so that if the work had been published 

 during his lifetime it would necessarily have been 

 extremely incomplete and imperfect. 



By the generosity of Sir Victor's executors the whole 

 of these drawings, plates and manuscript were unre- 

 servedly placed at the disposal of the senior author of the 

 splendid volumes before us, who for many years had 

 made constant, endeavours to increase our knowledge of 

 the antelopes of Africa, and by whom many remarkable 

 new types had been brought to the notice of the zoo- 

 logical world. As the work would have been too heavy for 

 a man with as many calls on his time as has the secretary 

 of the Zoological Society to carry out alone, Mr. Sclater 

 secured the assistance of Mr. Thomas, of the British 

 Museum. Such additional plates as were necessary to 

 complete the series of the more striking types of antelopes 

 were duly put in hand and completed. And the result 

 of this happy union of forces has been, after several 

 years of arduous labour, to produce a work the like of 

 which has never before been seen, and which will remain 

 a monument alike of the ability and industry of its 

 authors and of a group of lovely animals which are only 

 too rapidly and too surely disappearing for ever before 

 the advance of an all-devouring civilisation. 



Despite the fact that the new sketches lack the inimit- 

 able touch characteristic of Wolf's animal pictures, they 

 accord fairly well with lithographic reproductions of the 

 latter, and in certain instances are their superior in truth- 

 fulness to nature. For in sketches of this description 

 there is always a danger lest fidehty to the model should 

 be sacrificed to artistic effect, an instance in point occur- 

 ring in the case of Mrs. Gray's waterbuck of the White 

 Nile. 



Although coloured figures of a number of the more 

 striking South African antelopes appeared in the well- 

 NO. 1639, VOL. 63] 



known sporting work by the late Sir Cornwallis Harris, 

 while Dr. Gray, in the British Museum " Catalogue of 

 Ruminant Animals," published in 1872, gave a complete 

 list of the species then known to him, no fully illus- 

 trated monograph of this group of ruminants has, we 

 believe, ever previously been published — at least in this 

 country— so that the authors have the field practically to 

 themselves. In Gray's Catalogue a total of loi species 

 of these animals were recognised, of which no less than 

 81 are African ; but in a " Hand-list " published a year 

 later the number was reduced to 98, owing to three of 

 the African names having been found to be synonyms of 

 others. In the present monograph, the authors, apart from 

 a few described during'the progress of the work, recognise 

 a total of no less than 133 distinct species, about 120 of 

 which are African. It is true that certain of these so- 

 called species might be regarded by other naturalists 

 (now possibly in some instances by the authors them- 

 selves) in the light of local races ; but, even making 

 allowance for such possible reductions, the increase in 

 the number of well-established species of these animals 

 since the date of Gray's last list is very noteworthy, and 

 bears eloquent testimony to the energy with which African 

 zoology has been worked up of late years. As the great 

 majority of these new species have been described by 

 one or other of the authors, it was only right and proper 

 that the task of monographing the entire group should 

 have fallen to their lot. 



Although most of us have a general and vague idea of 

 what constitutes an "antelope," yet it is somewhat re- 

 markable that the group of animals thus designated is 

 one that does not admit of accurate limitation or defini- 

 tion. Some, for instance, might consider that the chamois 

 and the so-called white goat of the Rocky Mountains 

 were entitled to be included in the group ; but this is not 

 the view held by the authors of the present monograph. 

 As a matter of fact, the term is only a vague designation 

 for a number of more or less distinct groups of hollow- 

 horned ruminants which come under the designation 

 neither of cattle, sheep nor goats ; and in reality there 

 ought to be a distinct English group-name for each sub- 

 family into which "antelopes" are subdivided by our 

 authors. But we must take things as we find them, and 

 such subdivisions being impossible in colloquial lan- 

 guage, we cannot do better than agree to employ the 

 term "antelopes " in the sense in which it is used by the 

 authors ; that is to say, as indicating the animals treated 

 of in this work, and no others. 



As they have occasion to use it so frequently, it is per- 

 haps a little remarkable that the authors have apparently 

 made no attempt to trace the origin and derivation of the 

 word "antelope." So far as can be determined it 

 appears, however, to trace its origin, through the Latin, 

 to Pantholops, the old Coptic, and Antholops, the late 

 Greek name of the fabled unicorn. Its adoption by the 

 languages of Europe cannot apparently be traced further 

 back than the fourth century of our era, at which date it 

 was employed to designate an imaginary animal living 

 on the banks of the Euphrates. By the earlier English 

 naturalists, and afterwards by Buffon, it was, however, 

 applied to the Indian blackbuck, which is thus entitled 

 to rank as the antelope. It follows that the subfamily 

 typified by this species, in which are included the 



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