ORDER RUM1NANTIA. 369 



This species is lively, active, and petulant, trotting, am- 

 bling, and galloping with great swiftness ; the males 

 bellow somewhat like a bull ; the young have a nasal mur- 

 mur. They are sportive, and when alarmed always com- 

 mence by playing with each other, striking sideways with 

 their horns, but this lasts only a moment, the whole troop 

 soon flies across the desert with amazing speed. They are 

 gregarious, living in large herds on the barren deserts of 

 South and probably Central Africa ; at present none are 

 found nearer the Cape, than the great Karoo district, where 

 they undergo great vicissitudes of cold and excessive heat. 

 It is not likely that they would submit to domestication ; 

 we always found them vicious : many have been brought to 

 England, and from thence conveyed to the continent. 



Dr. Sparman first classed it with Antelope, and his and 

 Mr. Allaman's were the first figures, but Mr. Daniell's in 

 the African Scenery, is the best published. M. F. Cuvier 

 also published a good representation of a female. We have 

 been assured by Mr. Daniell, that the species is particu- 

 larly subject to a kind of bots, probably the larvae of an 

 (Estrus, which force their way into the nostrils, and num- 

 bers are expelled every time the animal snorts. This he 

 observed in all that he met on the Karoo plains, and is 

 possibly the origin of that disease which we mentioned as 

 consuming the Oreas, Caama, and others ; he may have 

 seen it in the commencement of its course : the word Gnoo 

 is of Hottentot derivation, the Dutch Colonists name it 

 Wilde- beast, or Wild Cattle, or Ox. 



The Kokoon. (C Taurina.) Mr. Daniell first published 

 the figure of this species, which, however, was already 

 noticed by Professor Lichtenstein, and Mr. Burchell had 

 deposited the spoils of one in the British Museum. The 

 male is nearly four feet six inches high at the shoulders, 

 but much lower at the croup, and five feet from the breast 

 to the rump ; the head, neck, and shoulders, are excessively 



