NATURAL HISTORY" OF AFRICA. 451 
horn ? To this I answer, as already clone by Pal- 
las, that it was the straight-horned antilope oryx 
of Gmelin, improperly named pasan by Buffon. 
This animal inhabits the deserts of Africa, and 
must frequently approach the confines of Egypt, 
and appears to be that which is represented in the 
hieroglyphics. It equals the ox in height, while 
the shape of its body approaches to that of a stag, 
and its straight horns present exceedingly formi- 
dable weapons, hard almost as iron, and sharp point- 
ed like javelins. Its hair is whitish ; it has black 
spots and streaks on its face, and the hair on its 
back points forwards. Such is the description given 
by naturalists ; and the fables of the Egyptian 
priests, which have occasioned the insertion of its 
figure among their hieroglyphics, do not require to 
have been founded in nature. Supposing that an 
individual of this species may have been seen which 
had lost one of its horns by some accident, it may 
have been taken as a representative of the entire 
race, and erroneously adopted by Aristotle to be 
copied by all his successors. All this is quite pos- 
sible and even natural, and gives not the smallest 
evidence for the existence of a single-horned spe- 
cies of antelope." 
Those animals in which the hoof is divided into 
more than two parts, or what are called multungu- 
iated, are abundant, and well characterized in Af- 
