CLASS I. MAMMALIA: ORDER 9. RUMINANTIA. 



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LNCLOSCRE OF ANTILOPES, GARDEN OF PLANTS, PARIS. 



THE ANTILOPINA OR ANTELOPINA. 



This tribe, including nearly a hundred species, none of "which have ever been permanently 

 domesticated, chiefly belong to warm climates ; Africa is their great center, though several be- 

 long to Asia, one or two are found in Europe, and one in America. Australia and Madagascar 

 are destitute of these as they are of other indigenous ruminants. They are of various colors, 

 forms, and sizes ; some of them bear resemblance to the ox, some to the goat, some to the sheep 

 and even to the deer. There has been great difficulty in classifying them, and many of the 

 species have been variously distributed by different authors. There is one general character in 

 which they agree : while they are hollow-horned, and in this respect are like the ruminants we 

 have described, the horns are round and annulated, yet not smooth like the horns of the ox, nor 

 do they exhibit those prominent ridtres and angles which are found in some of the buffaloes, and 

 ;ii the goats and sheep.* In the particular forms and curvatures of the horns there is the great- 



* The Antilopes or Antelopes differ from the deer in the structure of the horns. In the deer the horns, or more 

 iroperly antlers, are deciduous ; but in the antilopes — and the same observation applies to the goat and ox — these 

 >rgans consist of a horny sheath, investing a conical support of bone ; their increase is gradual, and they are not 

 early shed and renewed. The bony central support, or core, is a process from the frontal bone: in most antilopes 

 t is solid, or nearly so : it commences small at first, and assumes various directions in the various species. Some 

 mtilopes have four horns. The horny sheath consists of fibers analogous to those of whalebone, or rather- hair, 

 unning longitudinally or spirally, and agglutinated into one uniform mass. If this sheath be stripped from its 

 ,iony core, the latter will be found covered by a highly vascular periosteum, from which the fibers in question are 

 ecreted. They are formed in regular succession as the bone grows, so that the horn which covered the whole pro- 

 ess or core in the young animal, will in due time be thrown to its summit. The outermost layer was once in con- 

 act with the core, but was gradually pushed outward and upward. In some groups of antilopes both sexes are 

 urnished with horns, in others only the male : and it is difficult in many cases to discriminate between the hornless 

 'emales of one of the antilope and one of the deer tribe. 



