53 
of it. He gives “Arabia, and perhaps Libya,” as its locality, and adds 
references to the passage in the ‘Cynegetica’ of Oppian which we have 
already quoted, and to “ Gazelle Indice cornu singulare”—a “ curious horn 
of an Indian Gazelle ” which he had described in a former memoir on some 
fossil bones from Siberia. On referring to this memoir, and to the figure by 
which it is accompanied, we cannot say that we are by any means satisfied 
that the ‘“‘ curious horn” in question, which is remarkable for its length and 
slenderness (33 inches long, as given by Pallas) and for its numerous annu- 
lations, belonged to the present species. We will, however, go so far as to 
allow that it may possibly have done so. At any rate we must admit that it 
could hardly have been a horn of the Antelope which we now call the 
Leucoryx. 
The second original authority to describe the present species was our 
countryman Pennant in his ‘ History of Quadrupeds,’ where he gives the 
as the fifth species of his genus “ Antelope.” Pennant based 
his Leucoryx mainly upon “ two drawings of animals in the British Museum, 
taken from life in 1712 by order of Sir John Lock, Agent of the East India 
Company at Ispahan; they were preserved as rarities by the Shah of Persia 
in a park eight leagues from the capital.” Pennant informs us that he had 
copied his description of these animals from a paper accompanying the 
) 
“* Leucoryx ’ 
drawings. ‘This species, he tells us, inhabits “‘Gaw Behrein, an island in 
the Gulf of Bassorah,” meaning, no doubt, what we now call Bahrein Island 
in the Persian Gulf. Judging from the description and locality it would 
appear that Pennant’s “ Leucoryx” of 1781 was intended for the present 
Antelope, but the figure in the edition of Pennant’s work of 1793, it must be 
allowed, gives one rather the idea of a Beisa (Orya beisa). 
As regards the other authors which we have quoted above as following 
Pallas in calling this animal Antilope leucoryx, it is not necessary to take 
much trouble about them. They merely repeat the stories of their pre- 
decessors without adding anything original thereto, and seem to have had 
no true ideas of the distinctness of the present species from its allies. It was 
not, in fact, until 1857 that the present Antelope became properly known to 
science in Europe by the receipt of living specimens. ‘The first of these was 
brought from Bombay to England in that year and presented to the Zoological 
Society of London by Capt. John Shepherd, ‘This animal, which was at first 
supposed to be a half-grown specimen of the Gemsbok of the Cape, quickly 
