1870. | ANATOMY OF THE PRONGBUCK. 535 
2. The other feature is the constant endeavour to rearrange and 
place in natural systematic position ill assorted groups. 
The recent writings of Darwin and his opponents, doubtless, have 
stirred up the desire of investigating those seeming barriers of de- 
marcation between forms; while the onward accumulation of ma- 
terial and facts necessitates constant change and intercalation among 
groups but impartially known. 
A very good instance in point is the animal upon the anatomy of 
which the following notes have been made, 
The Cabrit or Pronghorn Antelope of naturalists has passed 
under several generic names, the most critical account of which is 
to be found in Dr. Richardson’s ‘ Fauna Boreali-Americana,’ p. 261. 
As my colleague Mr. Bartlett, however, has remarked, “ None*, 
however, appear to have hesitated to place it among the hollow- 
horned Ruminants,” until he himself offered evidence to prove 
“that the Prongbuck is not a true bovine animal.’’ His reasons « 
for adducing cervine, indeed multiple affinities to the Prongbuck 
instead of those previously accorded it, are based on the annual 
deciduous nature of its horns, and the total absence of false hoofs 
and glands—the former phenomenon having been first lucidly de- 
scribed and published by him in our ‘ Proceedings’ for 1866. 
Dr. Gray+t has called attention to a statement of Dr. Marsh’st 
as early as 1841, respecting this annual shedding of the horns ; and 
it seems also that Dr. Canfield § informed Dr. Spencer Baird (of the 
Smithsonian Institution) in 1858 of the phenomenon. The hints 
given by these observers ||, however, were fruitless and not generally 
credited by naturalists until Mr. Bartlett led the way to the impor- 
tance of the facts. 
Pondering over the apparent isolation of the characters of the 
animal in question, Dr. Sclater§/ suggested ranking it as a separate 
family of the order Ruminantia, under the title of Antilocapride, 
equivalent to the Camelopardalide. About the same time Dr. Gray ** 
made a somewhat similar proposition, and demonstrated with some 
care his ideas of the difference in nature of the horn of the so-calied 
Antilocapride, Girafide, and Cervide. 
Under these circumstances the anatomical structure possesses 
some interest—and the more so as, excepting a very imperfect de- 
scription of the skull by Dr. Richardson++, and short cranial charac- 
* Blainville and Rafinesque excepted, who place it under Cervus—the former, 
Nouv. Bull. Soc. Phil. 1816, p. 80. 
t Ann. & Mag. Nat. Hist. 1866, vol. xviii. p. 324. 
{ Ina letter to Dr. Pickering, see U. S. Exploring Expedition, Vnguiata, p. 63. 
§ Proc. Zool. Soc. 1866, p. 105. 
| As also Weinland (Zvol. Garten, 1863, p. 255) and Martin (“Die Hornbil- 
dung bei der Mazama Antelope,” bid. 1864, p. 254). The former considers the 
cast horns as abnormal; the latter that the new horn-tip grows downwards. 
Dr. Ginther has drawn my attention to these observations, otherwise uninten- 
tionally overlooked by me (vide his Record, 1865, p. 45). 
4] Brit. Assoc. Rep. 1866, and abstract Ann. and Mag. Nat. Hist. 1866, p. 401. 
** Ann. & Mag. Nat. Hist. 1866, p. 326. 
tt Op, cit. p. 265. 
