traveller has not always the opportunity of getting it into his
poU'euion. The various defcriptions that have been given of
it, all differing from each other, ihould Teem to have been
taken from report rather than from nature, notwithftanding
that one of them was, for fome time in the menagerie o f the
Prince of Orange at the Hague. Nature, though regular and
fyftematic in all her works, often puzzles and perplexes human
fyilems, of which this animal affords an inftanee. It partakes
of the horfe, the ox, the flag, and the antelope : the ihoulders,
body, thighs, and mane, are equine ; the head completely bovine
; the tail partly one and partly the other, exadtly 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 thzfubocular Jinus that is common to moll, though not all,
of the antelope tribe. Yet from this imperfeft charafrer it hal
been arranged, on the authority o f Sparrman, in the Syjlema
Natura, among the antelopes,' to which of the four it has certainly
the leafl affinity. The Linnasan fyflem can be confi-
dered only as the alphabet of nature, the characters o f which
cannot be too diftindly marked ; o f courfe, external appearances
only ihould enter into it. Perhaps the introduttion of
intermediate genera might without impropriety be adopted, to i
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 o f creation. The gnoo is a fecond time mentioned
in the Syflema Natures, and with more propriety, as a variety
of the bos caffer, or buffalo, under the name of elegant et parvus
Jifricanus bos, Idc.
Its
’ Its head is about eighteen inches long ; the upper part completely
guarded by the rugged roots of. the horns that fpread
acrofs the forehead, having only a narrow channel between
them that wears, out with age, as in thofe of the buffalo ; the
horns projeCt forwards twelve inches, then turn in a fhort
curve backwards ten inches; from the root to the point is only
nine inches ; down the middle of the face grows a ridge of
black hair four inches in length ; and from the under lip to the
throat another ridge fomewhat longer : the orbit of the eye is
round, and furrounded by long white hairs that, like fo many
radii, diverge and form a kind of ftar: this radiated eye gives
to the animal a fierce and very uncommon look. The fame
fort of white vitriffae are thinly difperfed over the lips: the
rieck is little more than a foot long: on the upper part is a
mane extending beyond the ihoulders, erddt,, and five inches
in length ; the hair like briflles, black in the middle and white
on each fide; this mane appears as if it had been cut and
trimmed: a ridge of black hair fix inches long extends from
the fore part of the cheft under the fore legs' to the beginning
of the abdomen : the body is about three feet two inches long ;
the joints of the hip-bones projedt high, and form on the buttocks
a pair of hemifpheres : the tail is two feet long, flat near
the root, where the hair grows only out of the fides ; this is
white, briffiy, and buihy : the whole length, from the point of
the nofe to the end of the tail, feven feet ten inches, and the
height three feet fix inches : the color is that of a moufe, with
a few ferruginous itraggling hairs on the fides : like the mare it
has only two teats ; and all its habits and its motions are equine :
though a fmall animal, it appears o f very confiderable fize
when