60 
Nevertheless the term ‘‘Gemsbok” has stuck to the Oryx of the Cape, and 
is still a familiar name for this beautiful Antelope both among the Dutch 
and the English in South Africa. As we have already shown, it is the type, 
or at any rate the first species, of de Blainville’s genus Oryx, and that must 
be its generic name, but to decide what term should be selected as its proper 
specific name is by no means an easy task. 
The “Capra gazella” of the tenth and twelfth editions of Linnzus’s 
‘Systema Nature’ has been held by many authors to refer to this species, 
whereas Pallas and his followers called the Leucoryx “Antilope gazella” and 
the present species “ Antilope oryx.” Modern writers have mostly called 
the Gemsbok either “Oryx capensis, Ogilby” (a name that is undoubtedly 
applicable to it), or “ Orya gazella,” or “Oryx oryx.’ Of these three 
names we think we are justified in selecting the Linnean “ gazella,” which has 
undoubted priority. It is true that Linneeus’s species is based mainly on Ray’s 
very imperfectly described “Gazella Indica cornibus rectis longissimis nigris,” 
and that its “habitat” is given as “India.” But Pallas himself quotes 
Linneus’s Capra gazella as a synonym of his ‘“ Antilope oryx”—so that 
we cannot justly use the latter term even if it were not the same as the 
generic name. It may also be urged that traditionally at least Linnzus’s 
term “gazella” has usually been acknowledged to refer to this species, 
which we therefore propose to designate Orya gazella. 
As may be gathered from what has been already stated, most of the older 
authors had no clear ideas as to the differences between this and the two 
preceding Antelopes, which they only knew from imperfect specimens, and 
did not even realize that their areas of distribution are in every case perfectly 
distinct. We must, however, make one exception from this statement. In 
the Dutch edition of Buffon’s ‘ Histoire Naturelle,’ published by Schneider at 
Amsterdam, to which we have had occasion more than once to refer, there 
will be found a very recognizable figure of the Gemsbok, which the author 
identifies, perhaps correctly, with the ‘“‘ Pasan” of Buffon. Allamand’s figure 
was taken from a skin received from the Cape of Good Hope, and is 
accompanied by a full and fairly accurate description. Both the figure and 
description of Allamand were reprinted by Buffon in the sixth volume of his 
‘Supplement’ to the ‘Histoire Naturelle,’ published at Paris in 1782. 
Allamand’s figure was again copied by Schreber on plate cclvii. of his 
‘ Sdaugethiere, which is believed to have been issued (long before the letter- 
