Although many kinds of gazelles are now known, the gazelle _par excellence_, that is to say, the ghazal of the Arabs, is the beautiful little species represented in the Plate, which, in order to distinguish it from its relatives, naturalists have designated the dorcas. And no more beautiful and delicately made creature exists in the world than this same gazelle, which has formed the theme of poets--especially in the East--for centuries, as the emblem of beauty, elegance, and fleetness. Many people persist in confusing gazelles with deer, although the two groups have but little in common, being broadly distinguished by the characters of their horns, which in gazelles are hollow, unbranched sheaths of true horn supported on cores of bone, while in deer they are branching structures of bare bone. Indeed, the so-called horns of deer are not really horns at all, at all events from the point of view of the naturalist, but rather antlers; and gazelles constitute a section of that group of ruminants collectively known as antelopes. Of the approximate size of a roebuck, the true, or dorcas, gazelle, like most of its kindred is coloured to harmonise with the more or less desert conditions of its home. The delicate rufous fawn of the upper-parts accords with the yellow tint of the rocks or sand amid which these beautiful creatures spend most of their time; while, when the animal is standing in the full glare of an Eastern sun, the white of the under surface counteracts the effect of the dark shade thrown by the body, and thus, even at comparatively short distances, makes for more or less complete invisibility. Neither is the white “blaze” on the rump without its special use, as it serves as a guide to the members of a troop to follow the line taken by their leader when safety depends solely upon fleetness of foot; the effect of the danger-signal on such occasions being increased by the elevation of the tail, of which the white under surface is then shown. In the bucks alone do the gracefully curved and heavily ringed black horns attain their full development; those of the does being thin and nearly smooth spikes. The range of the gazelle is large, including the whole of northern Africa, from Morocco in the west to Egypt in the east, and extending southwards to Nigeria and the Egyptian Sudan; while in Asia it embraces Palestine and Syria. In western and southern Arabia it is, however, replaced by the Arabian gazelle (_Gazella arabica_), which is itself a relative of the edmi gazelle (_G. cuvieri_), of Morocco, Algeria, and western Tunisia; the last-named being a mountain-dweller, whereas the dorcas is largely a native of the plains. [Illustration]