CLASS I. MAMMALIA: ORDER 9. RUMINANTIA. 
521 
INCLOSUEE OF ANTILOPES, GARDEN OF PLANTS, PARIS. 
THE ANTILOPINA OB, ANTELOPINA. 
This tribe, including nearly a hundred species, none of which have ever been permanently 
domesticated, chiefly belong to warm climates ; Africa is their great center, though several be- 
long to Asia, one or two are found in Europe, and one in America. Australia and Madagascar 
are destitute of tliese as they are of other indigenous ruminants. They are of various colors, 
forms, and sizes ; some of them bear resemblance to the ox, some to the goat, some to the sheep 
and even to the deer. There has been great difficulty in classifying them, and many of the 
species have been variously distributed by different authors. There is one general character in 
which they agree : while they are hollow-horned, and in this respect are like the ruminants we 
have described, the horns are round and annulated, yet not smooth like the horns of the ox, nor 
do they exhibit those prominent ridges and angles which are found in some of the buffaloes, and 
in the goats and sheep.* In the particular forms and curvatures of the horns there is the great- 
* The Antilopcs or Antelopes differ from the deer in the structure of the horns. In the deer the horns, or more 
properly antlers, are deciduous; but in the antilopes — ^and the same observation applies to the goat and ox — ^these 
organs consist of a horny sheath, investing a conical support of bone; their increase is gradual, and thej^ are not 
yearly shed and renewed. The bony central support, or core, is a process from the frontal bone : in most antilopes 
it is solid, or nearly so: it commences small at first, and assumes various directions in the various species. Some 
antilopes have four horns. The horny sheath consists of fibers analogous to those of whalebone, or rather hair, 
running longitudinally or spirally, and agglutinated into one uniform mass. If this sheath be stripped from its 
bony core, the latter will be found covered by a highly vascular periosteum, from which the fibers in question are 
secreted. They are formed in regular succession as the bone grows, so that the horn which covered the whole pro- 
cess or core in the young animal, will in due time be thrown to its summit. The outermost layer was once in con- 
tact with the cove, but was gradually pushed outward and upward. In some groups of antilopes both sexes are 
furnished with horns, in others only the male : and it is difficult in many cases to discriminate between the hornless 
females of one of the antilope and one of the deer tribe. 
