450 NATURAL HISTORY OF AFRICA. 
straight-horned antelope in profile, they could only 
give the figure one horn, and thus they produced 
an oryx. The oryxes, too, that are seen on the 
Egyptian monuments, are nothing more, probably, 
than productions of the stiff style, imposed on the 
sculptors of the country, by religious prejudices. 
Several of their profiles of quadrupeds shew only 
one fore and one hinder leg, and it is probable that 
the same rule led them also to represent only one 
horn. Perhaps their figures may have been copied 
after individuals that had lost one of their horns by 
accident, a circumstance that often happens to the 
chamois and the saiga, species of the antelope ge- 
nus, and this would be quite sufficient to establish 
the error. All the ancients, however, have not re- 
presented the oryx as having only one horn. Op- 
pian expressly attributes two to this animal, and 
iElian mentions one that had four. * Finally, if 
this animal was ruminant and cloven-footed, we are 
quite certain that its frontal bone must have been 
divided longitudinally into two, and that it could 
not possibly, as is very justly remarked by Camper, 
have had a horn placed upon the suture. 
" It may be asked, however, What two horned 
animal could have given an idea of the oryx> in the 
forms in which it has been transmitted down to 
us, even independent of the notion of a single 
* JElian. Anim. XV, 14, 
