58 ON THE REVOLUTIONS OF 



already well described and characterized by Aristotle *. The ancients 

 knew the giraffe or camel-leopard ; they even had a living one at Rome 

 in the circus under the dictatorship of Julius Caesar, in the year of 

 Rome 708. Gordian III. had ten at one time, which were killed at 

 the secular games of Philipf, which must astonish the moderns, who 

 have only seen one in the fifteenth century}. 



If we read attentively the descriptions of the hippopotamus, given 

 by Herodotus and Aristotle, and which are said to be borrowed from 

 Hecatseus of Miletus, we shall find that they must have been composed 

 of two different animals, of which one perhaps was the real hippopo- 

 tamus, and the other certainly the gnu, a quadruped of which our na- 

 turalists have made no mention till the end of the eighteenth century. 

 It was the same animal of which so many fabled narratives were told 

 under the name of catoblepas or catablepon§. 



The Ethiopian wild boar of Agatharchides, which had horns, was the 

 same as our Ethiopian wild boar, whose enormous weapons of defence 

 have almost as much claim to the name of horns as the tusks of the 

 elephant || . 



The bubalus and nagor are described by Pliny ^f ; the gazelle, by 

 ./Elian** ; the oryx, by Oppianff ; the axis was known in the time of 

 CtesiasJt ; the algazel and the corinna are perfectly depicted on Egyp- 

 tian monuments §§. 



./Elian well describes the yak or bos grunniens, under the name of 

 the ox, whose tail serves for a fly-flapper ||||. 



The buffalo has not been domesticated amongst the ancients ; but 

 the ox of the Indies, of which iElian^fiJ speaks, and which had horns 

 large enough to hold three amphorae, was a variety of the buffalo, 

 called ami. 



And even this wild ox, with depressed horns, which Aristotle places 

 in Arachosia***, must be the common buffalo. 



The ancients knew the oxen without hornsfft ; the oxen of Africa, 



* His. Anim. lib. ii, c. 1. 

 f Jul. Capitol. Gord. Ill, cap. 23. 



+ That which the soldan of Egypt sent to Lorenzo de Medicis, and which is painted 

 in the frescoes of Poggio Cajano. 



§ See Pliny, lib.viii, cap. 32, and Elian, lib. vii. c. 5. 



|| yElian, Anim. v. 27. 



^ Pliny, lib. viii, cap. 15, and lib. xi, c. 37. 



** ./Elian, Anim. 1. xiv. c. L4. 



tt Op. Cyneg. ii, v. 445, et seq. 



XX Pliny, lib.viii, c. 21. 



§§ See the great work on Egypt, Antiq. iv, pi. 49 and 66. 



Illl /Elian, Anim. xv, 14. 



1HI Id. iii, 34. 



*** Arist. Hist. An. lib. ii, cap. 5. fff /Elian, ii, 53. 



