61 
press) in 1784. Itis there named “ Antilope oryxz, Pallas,” as is also the case in 
the accompanying letterpress, issued in 1836, and in Wagner’s supplementary 
volumes of the ‘Saugethiere,’ in which the plate of this Antelope, published 
in 1848, is apparently also an improved copy of Allamand’s original figure. 
We will now turn to some of the chief authorities on the Natural History 
of the Cape, and see what we can learn from them as to the habits and exact 
distribution of the present animal, of which the systematists tell us very 
little. Sparrman, who was in South Africa in 1772 and the following years, 
after commenting on the unsuitable appellation applied to it, says that the 
Gemsbok is in all probability peculiar to the north-western part of the 
Colony, for that in the country which he traversed, which was mainly east 
from Cape Town, he neither saw nor heard anything of it. But its remarkable 
horns were not at that period scarce in collections at Cape Town. Patterson, 
about 1790, met with the Gemsbok in Clanwilliam; and Barrow, about ten 
years later, seems to have come across it in Willowmore. Lichtenstein, in 
the second volume of his travels (1812), notes the occurrence of the Gemsbok 
in the Hopetown District, and writes of it as Antilope oryx. Steedman, 
whose ‘Wanderings in South Africa’ were published in 1835, devotes 
considerable attention to this animal and gives a good figure of it (vol. ii. 
p. 55) from specimens obtained on the farm of Stoffel Jacobs, near Bushman’s 
Poorte, just south of the Orange River. 
We now come to the epoch of the celebrated traveller Sir William 
Cornwallis Harris, who penetrated far into the interior of South Africa in 
1836 and 1837. On plate ix. of his ‘ Portraits’ Harris gives excellent figures 
accompanied by full descriptions of both sexes of the Gemsbok, which he 
met with on the Moloppo and Modder Rivers in Bechuanaland, and in the 
adjoining districts of the Orange Free State. We extract the following 
passages from Harris’s lively chapter on this Antelope :— 
“The South African Oryx is a most wild and warlike-looking animal, not less 
remarkable for beauty, speed, and vigour, than famed for the excellence of its venison, 
which is everywhere held in the highest estimation. Although usually found in pairs 
on the Karroos and unfrequented stony districts, which form its invariable habitation, 
the males sometimes possess two females, constituting, with their young, a family of 
five or six individuals. The calves, which are born of a reddish cream colour, become 
whiter as they increase in bulk, and are easily domesticated; but their uncertain temper 
renders it difficult at any time to pronouncethem tame. ‘Their horns, at first blunt and 
round at the tips, are soon ground to a fine needle-like point, by dint of raking and 
