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volume of his ‘ Histoire Naturelle,’ called it ‘‘ Le Coudous,” or, at any rate, 
gave unmistakable figures of its horns under that name, which, we suppose, 
he had by some error transposed to it from the Kudu (Strepsiceros capensis). 
It was mainly upon Kolben’s Alces capensis and Buffon’s “ Coudous” that 
Pallas, in his first essay on the genus Antilope (1776), based his Antilope 
oryaz, alleging that it ‘seemed to be” the Antilope oryx of ancient authors! 
At the same time he states that he had examined a complete skeleton of this 
animal in the Museum of Prince William of Holland. Very unfortunately, 
in his second and amended list of the Antelopes, Pallas proposed to make a 
change in his former names by transferring the term “‘ oryx” to another animal 
(the Antilope bezoartica of his first memoir) and assigning the new name 
* oreas” to the Eland. ‘This change, however, we may say, has been generally 
acquiesced in, and the name oreas has been almost universally applied to the 
Eland, either specifically or generically, until modern days, when the zealous 
searchers after priority have resuscitated Pallas’s long-forgotten term “ orya.” 
This, indeed, seems certainly to be the earliest specific name applicable to 
the present animal and should, in strict justice, be adopted. 
As regards its generic name the Eland has been equally unfortunate. 
Desmarest, in 1822, first proposed to use “‘ Oreas” as a subgeneric term for 
this form; and Gray, in 1850, employed it as a genus, combining it with the 
specific term “ canna,’ so that the name of the Eland became Oreas canna. 
As will be seen by our list of synonyms, this name was generally adopted, 
and has been in constant use for the present species for the last twenty years. 
We have, however, shown that ‘“‘oreas,” as a specific term, must give 
place to “oryr”; and in like manner ‘“ Oreas” cannot stand as a generic 
term for the present animal, because it has been previously employed 
in zoology as a genus of Lepidoptera (1806) and as a genus of Mollusca 
(1808), both of which antedate Desmarest’s use of it in 1822. Under these 
circumstances it is necessary to adopt the next given name, Taurotragus ot 
Wagner, and the correct scientific name of the Eland, according to modern 
usage, will be Taurotragus oryz. 
Having now stated at full length our reasons for the unwelcome but 
necessary change of name of this Antelope, we will resume our comments on 
its literary history. 
In the Supplement to his ‘ Histoire Naturelle,’ published in 1782, Buffon 
was able to give an improved account of the Eland, This was mostly copied 
