160 CLASS MAMMALIA. 



known designation. Notwithstanding that an attempt to 

 establish a natural succession of groups, encumbered with 

 its endless recurrence of anomalies, is further impeded by 

 the interposition of the genera Capra and Ovis, we shall 

 endeavour to show the progress made to be principally 

 derived from the accumulation of new species, whose cha- 

 racters have led to an additional number of groups for 

 some, and the proposition of two new genera for others ; 

 thus forming a connected series of all the Cavicornia, the 

 Caprine tribe passing into the Bovine at an arbitrary point 

 of separation, which it seems resides among those species 

 which are strictly independent of either. 



In every attempt to find characters sufficiently constant to 

 serve for distinctive signs of the groups or racemi, even when 

 these are considerably augmented in number, we found that 

 the flexures of the horns were inapplicable, because they 

 occur seldom more than in one animal of a group, though in 

 all other characters its component species are perfectly ho- 

 mogeneous. As, therefore, the horns assume in osculant 

 species a great variety of shapes, recourse was had to the 

 combined characters of stature and the superior elevation of 

 the spinous processes, arising from the interscapular verte- 

 brae, the comparative depression of the croup, the position 

 of the osseous nuclei on the frontals, provided with a cell at 

 their base, and other inferior distinctions, all of which we 

 wish naturalists to verify. These afforded data sufficient 

 to separate most of the larger anomalous species from the 

 genus Antilope, and to place them under the proposed 

 name of Damalis, near the Bovine tribe. To the Bovina 

 we refer the Gnoo of authors, also forming a new genus 

 distinguished generically as Catoblepas, and forming the 

 first of this, as Damalis constitutes the last of Caprina. 

 Having thus far disposed of the evidently-anomalous spe- 

 cies, it was desirable to arrange the succession of the sub- 

 genera or groups retained in Antilope, so as to place those 



