Aristotle gives to his hippelaphus a kind of mane upon the neck and upon the upper part of the shoulders, a beard under the throat, horns to the male resembling those of the roe-bucks, and no horns to the female. He says, that the hippelaphus is of the size of a stag, and is found among the Arachotas, a people of India, where wild oxen are also to be met with, whose bodies are robust, their skins black, their muzzles raised, and their horns bent more backwards than those of the domestic oxen. It must be acknowledged, that Aristotle's characters of the hippelaphus, agree nearly with those of the rein-deer and the stag of Ardennes; they both have long hair upon the neck and shoulders, and also on the throat, which forms a kind of beard on the gullet, and not on the chin; but the hippelaphus, being only of the size of the stag, differs in that from the rein-deer, who is much larger: and what appears to me decisive on the question is, that the rein-deer being an animal belonging to cold countries, never existed among the Arachotas. The country of the Arachotas is one of the provinces which Alexander travelled over in his expedition into India; it is situated beyond Mount Caucasus, between Persia and India. This hot climate never produced any rein-deer, as they cannot exist even in temperate countries, and are only to be met with in the northern regions of both continents. Stags, on the contrary, are not particularly attached to the north, but are to be found in great numbers in warm and temperate climates. Thus we cannot doubt but the hippelaphus of Aristotle, which is met with among the Arachotas, and in the same countries with the buffalo, is the stag of Ardennes, and not the rein-deer. If we now compare what Pliny says upon the tragelaphus with what Aristotle says upon the hippelaphus, and both with Nature, we shall find, that the tragelaphus is the same animal as the hippelaphus, and therefore the same as our stag of Ardennes. Pliny says, that the tragelaphus is of the stag species,[J] and only differs from him by the beard and the hair on his shoulders. These characters are positive, and can only be applied to the stag of Ardennes; for Pliny speaks elsewhere of the rein-deer under the name of _Alcé_. We think ourselves, therefore, sufficiently warranted to pronounce, that the tragelaphus of Pliny, and the hippelapus of Aristotle, both denote the animal we call the _Stag of Ardennes_; and that the axis of Pliny is the animal commonly called the _Ganges Stag_. Though names have no influence on Nature, yet an explication of them is doing service to those who study her productions. [J] Eadem est specie (cervi videlicet) barbâ tantum; et armorum villo distans quem _tragelaphon_ vocant non alibi quam juxta Phasius amnem nascens. _Pliny._ Hist. Lib. viii. c. 33. SUPPLEMENT.