Ahhandlungen der Kuniglichen Akademie zu Berlin. 59 \ 



been before (in his opinion, mistakenly) applied by Pallas to a 

 species from Southern Africa. We may here mention that our 

 authour is firmly convinced that the corresponding races of Auti- 

 lopes which occur in the North and in the South of Africa respec- 

 tively, are positively and specifically distinct ; and consequently 

 that it is impossible that the animal described by Pallas should be 

 one and the same with that indicated by the Roman Naturalist. 

 However well founded this opinion may be, and M. Lichtenstein 

 states it with all the warmth of a favourite theory, there is some 

 reason to doubt the absolute novelty of the animal of which the 

 description is here given from a full grown female. In form and 

 comparative measurement it very closely corresponds with that 

 described and figured by Dr. Otto in the 12th volume of the 

 Transactions of the Leopoldino-Carolinean Academy, under the 

 name of A. suturosa, of which a notice will be found in our pre- 

 sent volume, p. 251. The remarkable thinness and shortness of 

 its hair, and the total want of the sutures which form so striking 

 a feature in Dr. Otto's animal, are by no means, as our authour 

 himself confesses, certain marks of distinction ; the circumstance 

 of the latter having been brought when very young from its native 

 Climate, Syria, into the colder regions of Europe, being alone suf- 

 ficient to account for the length and thickness of the covering with 

 which nature had provided it, and perhaps also for the peculiar 

 manner of growth of that covering. The extreme and dispro- 

 portionate breadth and flatness of the hoof which M. Lichtenstein 

 regards as characteristic of his species, is a more important point 

 of difference, no such formation being observable either in the 

 description or the figure published by Dr. Otto. Still these are 

 trivial characters on which to found a specific distinction ; and it 

 is clear, from his supplementary observations, that the authour 

 himself feels inclined to regard the one as a mere variety of the 

 other. We regret that, following an usage too prevalent among 

 his countrymen, he has not thought fit to point out its essential 

 characters in a specific phrase, which we will not run the hazard 

 of compiling from his description. We trust, however, that this 

 neglect of the example set by the great master of modern Natural 

 History in one of those v6ry points, by means of which he sue- 



