SOUTHERN AFRICA. 215 
it, all differing from each other, should seem to have been 
taken from report rather than from nature, notwithstanding 
that one of them was for some time in the menagerie of the 
Prince of Orange at the Hague. Nature, though regular and 
systematic in all her works, often puzzles and perplexes human 
systems, of which this animal affords an instance. In the 
shape of its body it evidently partakes of the horse, the ox, 
the stag, and the antelope : the shoulders, body, thighs, and 
mane, are equine ; the head completely bovine ; the tail partly 
one and partly the other, exactly like that of the quacha ; the 
legs, from the knee-joints downwards, and the feet, are slen- 
der and elegant like those of the stag, and it has the subocular 
sinus, which is common to most, though not to all, of the an- 
telope tribe. Yet from this imperfect character it has been ar- 
ranged, on the autliority of Sparrman, in the Sijstema Naturce.j 
among the antelopes, to which, of the four, it has certainly the 
least affinity. The Linnaean system can be considered only as 
the alphabet of nature, the characters of which cannot be too 
clearly and distinctly marked ; of course, external appearances 
only should enter into it. Perhaps the introduction inter- 
mediate genera might without impropriety be adopted, to in- 
clude such animals as are found to partake of more than one 
genus ; which would also point out the nice links that unite 
the grand chain of creation. The gnoo is a second time men- 
tioned in the Sy sterna Nat arm, and with more propriety, as a 
variety of the bos coffer, or buffalo, under the name of elegans 
ef parvus Africa nus bos, <f-c. 
Its head is about eighteen inches long ; the upper part com- 
pletely guarded by the rugged roots of the horns that spread 
