44 
absence of accessory hoofs, as well as the divergence in the colour of the 
fur, sufficiently distinguishing the present species from the Grysbok. 
Lichtenstein no doubt derived his ideas upon this subject from Forster’s 
manuscripts, as the same view is taken in Forster's posthumous work 
‘Descriptiones Animalium,’ when it was tardily published in 1844. Under 
these circumstances there can be no doubt, we think, that “ campestris” is 
the proper specific term to be employed for the present species. 
In an article upon the Ruminants published by Blainville in the ‘ Bulletin 
of the Société Philomathique’ for 1816 and subsequently enlarged in the 
‘Journal de Physique,’ that author described and figured the skull of a 
specimen which he had observed in the Museum of the Royal College of 
Surgeons in London and called it Antilope acuticornis. On Blainville’s 
description and figure of this skull Hamilton Smith, in the fifth volume of 
Griffith’s Cuvier, subsequently established a new genus of Antelopes, “ Raphi- 
cerus.”’ Whoever consults this figure and compares it with a skull of 
the Steinbok will inevitably come to the conclusion that the figure represents 
the skull of that animal. We have accordingly added Antilope acuticornis 
of Blainville, and the further references to it subsequently published, to the 
synonyms of the Steinbok, and under these circumstances have thought it 
necessary to give the generic term Raphicerus precedence as the generic name 
of the present group over the better known names Calotragus of Sundevall 
and Pediotraqus of Fitzinger. 
It would seem also that Antilope subulata of Hamilton Smith, given in 
the same work as a second species of Raphicerus, and taken from another 
pair of horns, also then in the Museum of the Royal College of Surgeons, may 
be safely referred to the present species. 
Captain Harris, in his ‘ Portraits of the Game and Wild Animals of South 
Africa, published in 1840, figures the Steen-bok, as he calls it, along with 
the Rhebok in his 25th plate, and speaks of it as ‘common in the Colony.” 
In 1861, when Mr. Layard prepared his ‘Catalogue of the Mammals in 
the Collection of the South African Museum,’ the Steinbok was spoken of as 
then common throughout the Colony. It is partial, Mr. Layard tells us, “ to 
flat plains covered with bushes” and “selects a spot, in the immediate 
neighbourhood of which it may constantly be found. When a Steinbok is 
killed off, a few days suffice to reproduce a new occupant for the favoured 
spot.” 
