282 ANIMALS OF THE 



streaks of whitish hair in the internal side of the 

 ear. These are characters that none of them are 

 without : besides these, there are others which in 

 general they are found to have, and which are 

 more obvious to the beholder. Of all animals in 

 the world, the gazelle has the most beautiful eye, 

 extremely brilliant, and yet so meek, that all the 

 eastern poets compare the eyes of their mistresses 

 to those of this animal. A gazelle-eyed beauty is 

 considered as the highest compliment that a lover 

 can pay ; and indeed the Greeks themselves 

 thought it no inelegant piece of flattery to resem- 

 ble the eyes of a beautiful woman to those of a 

 cow. The gazelle, for the most part, is more de- 

 licately and finely limbed than even the roebuck ; 

 its hair is as short, but finer and more glossy. Its 

 hinder legs are longer than those before, as in the 

 hare, which gives it greater security in ascending 

 or descending steep places. Their swiftness is 

 equal, if not superior to that of the roe j but as 

 the latter bounds forward, so these run along in 

 an even uninterrupted course. Most of them are 

 brown upon the back, white under the belly, with 

 a black stripe separating those colours between. 

 Their tail is of various lengths, but in all covered 

 with pretty long hair ; and their ears are beauti- 

 ful, well placed, and terminating in a point. They 

 all have a cloven hoof, like the sheep ; they all 

 have permanent horns, and the female has them 

 smaller than the male. 



Of these animals M. Buffon makes twelve va- 

 rieties, which, however, is much fewer than what 

 other naturalists have made them. The first is 



