PREFACE. Vii 
however, other matters intervened and sadly interfered with my friend’s 
studies in Natural History. Sir Victor changed his habitual residence to 
Pau, and though I now saw him occasionally in London on his way from 
France to his home in Ireland, I could never induce him to continue his 
former researches, although he always assured me that he was still devoted to 
Natural Science and was determined to return to it eventually. Circumstances, 
however, prevented him from carrying his wishes into effect. In November 
1891, when still in the prime of life, Sir Victor died, leaving his great work 
still unfinished, and represented mainly by a series of over a hundred 
lithographic plates, which, as already mentioned in the Introduction, have 
formed the basis of the present work. The MSS. which were also kindly 
placed at my disposal by the family, not having been touched for nearly fifteen 
years, were in such an incomplete state that it was impossible to utilize them. 
Upon pointing out this to his son, the present Sir Douglas Brooke, he was 
good enough to assure me that his only wish was that the best possible use 
for Science should be made of the whole of the materials accumulated by his 
father. Acting upon this understanding I undertook to prepare the letter- 
press of an entirely new work on the Antelopes, using such of Sir Victor's 
plates as I could employ for its illustration. 
Such was the origin of the present work, now happily brought to a close 
after a period of six years, during which it has occupied no unimportant part 
of my leisure time. Even so it would not have been possible for me to 
have accomplished it without the able assistance of my excellent friend 
Mr. Oldfield Thomas, of the British Museum. It was, of course, of the 
greatest advantage to the work that Thomas was already familiarly acquainted 
with the subject, and had, moreover, under his charge the unrivalled series 
of specimens of Mammals contained in our National Collection. 
Although Thomas and I consider ourselves, of course, jointly responsible 
for all the statements in this work, every line of which has undergone the 
supervision of both authors, I may state that Thomas’s chief part of the task 
