ORDER RUMINANTIA. 157 



lated, and often spiral character of the horns. To desig- 

 nate the new genus, he applied generically the English 

 word antelope, which, since the time of Ray, was appro- 

 priated to the common or Cervicapra species, although 

 long known in the list of fabulous beings, which heralds 

 are supposed to have invented for the purposes of their art, 

 but which, in this instance, was intended to designate a 

 true antelope of the Orygine group. The earliest indica- 

 tion of this kind, in English heraldry, is, we believe, among 

 the cognizances of the Plantagenet branches, issuing from 

 King Edward III., about the close of the fourteenth century. 

 The Antelope was a symbol of an honour held by the house 

 of Lancaster. John of Lancaster, the great Duke of Bed- 

 ford, bore his arms supported by this animal*, and from 

 the time of King Henry IV., the office of Antelope Pur- 

 suivant, had been instituted and continued to the end of 

 the Lancastrian branch. Whether heralds had an obscure 

 knowledge of the animal through their intercourse with 

 the Crusaders, cannot now be ascertained ; but the name 

 itself, appearing nowhere in classical Greek or Roman 

 writers, seems derived, according to the learned researches 

 of Baron Cuvier, from AvQoXo^, used byEustathius, Bishop 

 of Antioch, who wrote during the reign of Constantine f. 



* The arms of this Prince, painted, among other embellishments, 

 upon a prayer-book, once his property, and bearing evidence of the 

 Bruges style of that period, represents the Antelope black, with 

 straight spiral annulated horns, evidently copied from those of an 

 oryx, though placed almost at right angles upon the head ; the 

 animal has gilded tusks, but in other respects is not ill drawn. The 

 Antelope is at this time the badge of the sixth regiment of infantry. 



t The Baron, indeed, writes Antholopos, probably from an error 

 in the press : it occurs in the Hexamceron, and is sufficiently curi- 

 ous. The Antholops is represented as very swift, and hunted with 

 difficulty ; it has long horns in the shape of saws, with which it 

 saws trees of considerable elevation and thickness. When thirsty, it 

 approaches the Euphrates, and gambols along its borders in the bram- 

 bles, where it is sometimes entangled, and there caught and slain. 



