Time will confirm the propriety of one or other of these conjectures. One word more in Hasselquist's description would have fixed these doubts, and clearly determined the genus of this animal. But scholars, who have only the gamut of their master in their heads, or rather in their pockets, cannot avoid making blunders and essential omissions, because they entirely renounce investigation, which should guide every observer of Nature, and view her productions through the false medium of arbitrary method, which only serves to hinder them from reflecting on the objects they meet with, and to calculate the description of them on a bad and erroneous model. As, in reality, all objects differ materially from each other, so they ought all to be treated differently; one single striking character happily discovered, is sometimes decisive, and often conveys more knowledge of a subject than a thousand trifling indexes. Whenever they are numerous they consequently become equivocal and common, and then they are at least superfluous, if not prejudicial, to the real knowledge of Nature, who sports with the forms we prescribe, soars above all method, and can only be perceived by the penetrating eye of Genius. SUPPLEMENT. From M. Allemand we received a letter, dated October, 1766, containing a number of excellent observations respecting this animal, and from which the following is an extract: "I am in possession of a stuffed giraffe, and since you expressed a desire to know the nature of its horns I cut one of them off, and send it to you; it is, however, necessary to observe, that it belonged to a very young one. I received it from the governor of the Cape, who informed me that it was killed as it was lying by the side of its mother; it was about six feet in height, and its horns did not exceed two inches and a half. These horns were covered all over with skin and hairs; the base was more than an inch broad, forming an obtuse cone; and to be certain whether it was solid or hollow I sawed it through longitudinally with that part of the skull to which it adhered, and I found its texture to resemble that of the horns of the stag more than any other animal. If indeed I were positive that a horn which was sent me as belonging to a giraffe did really belong to that animal, I should not hesitate to say there was no difference between them, except in the figure, this being straight, and without branches. With respect to the legs I conceive their disproportion in length has been greatly magnified, for the difference between the fore and hind ones of this young animal is very slight."