26o 
TRAVELS IN 
traveller has not always the opportunity of getting it into his 
pofleffion. The various defcriptions that have been given of 
it, all differing from each other, fhould feem to have been 
taken from report rather than from nature, notwithftanding 
that one of them was for fome time in the menagerie of the 
Prince of Orange at the Hague. Nature, though regular and 
fyftematic in all her works, often puzzles and perplexes human 
iyftems, of which this animal affords an inftance. It partakes 
of the horfe, the ox, the flag, and the antelope : the fhoulders, 
body, thighs, and mane, are equine ; the head completely bo- 
vine ; the tail partly one and partly the other, exadly like that 
of the quacha ; the legs, from the knee-joints downwards, and 
the feet, are flender and elegant like thofe of the flag, and it 
has the fiihocular fmus that is common to moft, though not all, 
of the antelope tribe. Yet from this imperfect characSter it has 
been arranged, on the authority of Sparrman, in the Syjlema 
Natura^ among the antelopes, to which of the four it has cer- 
tainly the leaft affinity. The Linnsean fyftem can be confi- 
dered only as the alphabet of nature, the characters of which 
cannot be too diftindly marked ; of courfe, external appear- 
ances only fhould enter into it. Perhaps the introdudtion of 
intermediate genera might without impropriety be adopted, to 
include fuch animals as are found to partake of more than one 
genus ; which would alfo point out the fine links that unite the 
grand chain of creation. The gnoo is a fecond time mentioned 
in the Syjlema Natura^ and with more propriety, as a variety 
of the bos coffer^ or buffalo, under the name of degans et parvus 
Afrlca?iiis hos^ '<3'c. 
Its 
