ANTELOPES. 423 



be used to great advantage. By nature antelopes seem to be 

 created to become the prey of the carnivora, for all the chief 

 animals included under this heading seek them out by instinct, and 

 lie in wait for them at their drinking-haunts. Occasionally, how- 

 ever, they can prove themselves a match for their opponents, for if 

 alarmed in time, so that they can take to flight, they defy pursuit, 

 and even if unable to escape, by a skilful use of their horns they can 

 keep their enemy at a distance. Now and again even the lion will 

 come to grief through these weapons, generally, however, in con- 

 sequence of his own eagerness, for with a mighty bound he will land 

 upon the sharp points and be there impaled. , Several travellers 

 in Africa have come across the dead bodies or skeletons of two 

 animals, a lion and an antelope, lying side by side, the one trans- 

 fixed on the other's horns. 



In captivity, antelopes are very stupid animals ; their chief trait 

 being excessive timidity, and under its influence they frequently 

 maim or kill themselves when startled, which they often are by so 

 slight a thing as a bird alighting near them, or a person slipping on 

 a stone, or even by some entirely inexplicable cause ; their senses 

 become subservient to the instinct that leads them to immediate 

 flight, and away they start, madly rushing against the wall, or with 

 a frantic leap dash against the fence and so injure their limbs, 

 break their horns, or, in numerous instances, kiU themselves. 

 Experience apparently fails to teach them either the absurdity of 

 their alarm or the fact that the height of the fence is beyond their 

 powers of leaping, for again and again they will go through the 

 same performance. The Zoological Society have on many occa- 

 sions lost rare specimens in this unavoidable way, and of one par- 

 ticular species not a single animal of the number they have pos- 

 sessed at various periods has been known to die a natural death. 



The family of antelopes is subdivided into two great divisions, 

 the antelopes of the deserts and the antelopes of the plains. They 

 are readily distinguishable by certain peculiarities about the 

 nostrils. The animals of the latter category have the nostrils bald 

 or free from hairs, while in the desert animals these organs are 

 bearded within or covered with bristles. There are other dis- 

 tinctions, but they are not quite so obvious or easily recognized. 



