RUMINANTIA. 215 



way : but immediately after, off they start, travers- 

 ing the desert with a speed which soon carries 

 them beyond the reach of danger. They do not 

 run in a confused crowd, like sheep or oxen, but 

 in single file, following a leader, and exhibiting the 

 most agreeable regularity, as they bound over the 

 level plains."* 



We must not dismiss the Antelopes, before no- 

 ticing the soft beauty of their large black eyes, 

 which has furnished the eastern poets, and our own 

 too, with so many delightful comparisons ; and which 

 has probably originated the name of the tribe. 



Caprafi the Goat, and Ovis,~\- the Sheep. 



Of these two interesting genera, associated with 

 man in his earliest historical records, J accompany- 

 ing the Patriarchs in their self-denying wanderings, 

 the subjects of the most acceptable sacrifice, and 

 (the latter) a type and emblem of Him who bore 

 the sins of a guilty world, as " THE LAMB THAT 

 WAS SLAIN," we have not room to say much. Our 

 domestic races (C. Hircus, and O. Aries,) are well 

 known and easily distinguished, but it is difficult to 

 find any permanent characters of sufficient importance 

 to furnish generic distinctions, the primal parent- 

 age of each being lost in obscurity. We subjoin 

 the points of difference between the Wild Goat and 

 Sheep of Nepal, given by Mr. Hodgson, in a paper 

 published in the Proceedings of the Zool. Society. 



* Wanderings, vol. i. p. 139. t Their Latin names. 



J Gen. iv. 2. 1834, p. 108. 



