154 CLASS MAMMALIA. 



the name TABOYC written over. In a drawing of the 

 same Mosaic, the word appears to be partly effaced, but to 

 have been PA$OYC. It is remarkable that while the 

 spotted figures are without a name, the animal in question, 

 occupying that part of the picture which designates the 

 Cataracts of the Nile, should be called by the ^Ethiopian 

 appellation, which, according to Pliny, was Nabis, resem- 

 bling the Hottentot Naip ; or by the second reading be 

 like the Arabic, or one of its dialects *. 



The Cavicornian Family. 



The ruminants which constitute the remainder of the 

 order, seem to be all constructed after one model, their 

 osteological characters differing only in proportion, or in 

 the greater or less development of parts. The males of the 

 whole, and the females of most of the species, are pro- 

 vided with real horns ; that is, with osseous prolongations 

 from the frontals, covered with a horny substance, not 

 deciduous nor growing out from the extremity, but re- 

 ceiving their increase at the base. Although the number 

 of species is very considerable, it is difficult to assign suf- 

 ficient characters to divide them by distinct and permanent 

 indications. They may be viewed as forming one great 

 family divisible into two tribes, the Caprine and Bovine ; 

 but it cannot be concealed, that this division, certainly 

 convenient, is, nevertheless, arbitrary in its limits, for the 



* The Negroes who asserted that there is a wild camel in Central 

 Africa, agreed in the colour being ashy, and in the animal having 

 horns and tusks : they represented it to be very large and fierce, 

 but none had been near one. The Prsenestine Mosaic is said to be 

 of the time of Marius ; but what appears better proved is that 

 Egyptian Greeks were the artists employed to make this kind of 

 work even in Italy and Spain, as is evident from the birds, fish, &c., 

 figured. In the fragments of a Mosaic at Avenches (Aventicum), 

 in Switzerland, the Mormyrus Qxyrynchus of the Nile, cannot be 

 mistaken. 



