ORDER RUMINANTIA. 427 



situated with ourselves, have no doubt felt the difficulties 

 arising from this circumstance. However careful and exten- 

 sive private notes may be considered when they are first 

 drawn up, they leave a doubt upon the mind, and a wish 

 to re-examine the materials, when they are about to be 

 submitted to the public. 



We have entered into a variety of details, some not 

 strictly zoological, but all, we hope, interesting. We 

 endeavoured to fix a number of species, not with the 

 expectation that science will take our opinions for 

 more than their value, but with a wish to state fairly 

 what are our present impressions after a long and atten- 

 tive study of the order we have investigated. The new 

 subgenera or Racemi which are proposed, may partly be 

 converted into genera, if the progress of science should 

 render it preferable ; and the specific names are in part the 

 restoration of those by which the ancients designated the 

 species, and in part new. These latter, we leave to the can- 

 did judgment of philological naturalists, affixing to our 

 nomenclature, no further importance than that of mere 

 names, many of which date anteriorly to the descriptions 

 that have appeared in print from other Naturalists ; feel- 

 ing more solicitous about the correctness of the statements, 

 than the value of our names : we nevertheless mean not to 

 imply that nomenclature is an unimportant branch of the 

 natural sciences. We regret that this investigation ap- 

 pears with so many questions undetermined, and yet neces- 

 sary for the precision of classification : some of these, are 

 the result of that haste which always accompanies a 

 traveller, whose principal occupations allow only of certain 

 moments to bestow upon Natural History; and if it had not 

 been for the universally liberal aid and facilities received in 

 the cabinets abroad, facilities which are sometimes denied 

 in this country, these sheets would be still more incom- 

 plete than they now are. It is to be hoped, that the truly 



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