Buffon's Natural History. Volume 08 (of 10): Containing a Theory of the Earth, a General History of Man, of the Brute Creation, and of Vegetables, Minerals, &c. &cBuffon, Georges Louis Leclerc, comte de
History
Buffon's Natural History. Volume 08 (of 10): Containing a Theory of the Earth, a General History of Man, of the Brute Creation, and of Vegetables, Minerals, &c. &c
Buffon, Georges Louis Leclerc, comte de
Natural history
a goat, and not one of the ancients has spoken of the dama as having
a beard. I am inclined therefore to believe that this dama of Caius
is only a goat, whose horns being a little bent at their extremities,
like those of the common gazelle, made him imagine it to be the dama of
the ancients. Besides this character of the horns being bent forwards,
which is the most certain index of the dama, is not properly marked
in any other animal except the nanguer of Africa. From the remarks of
M. Adanson, it appears, there are three varieties of these nanguers,
which only differ in the colour of the hair, but all their horns bend
forwards in a greater or lesser degree.
The tenth gazelle is a very common animal in Barbary and Mauritania,
and which the English call _antelope_, a name we shall likewise adopt.
This animal is of the size of a roe-buck, and greatly resembles the
gazelle and the kevel, yet it differs from them in so many particulars,
that it may be looked upon as a different species. The antelope has
deeper eye-pits than the gazelle; its horns are near fourteen inches
long almost touching each other at the bottom, yet their points are
fifteen or sixteen inches asunder. They are surrounded with rings and
semi-rings like the gazelle and kevel, but not so distinguishable; but
what particularly discriminates the antelope, is its horns having a
double flexion, which gives them the appearance of an antique lyre. The
antelope, like other gazelles, is yellow on the back, and white under
the belly; but these two colours are not separated by the black streak
which is to be found in all the rest of the gazelle kind.
There seems to be different races of the antelope as there are in
the other gazelles. 1. In the royal cabinet is a horn, which must be
attributed to a much larger antelope than that we have been speaking
of; it is called _lidmee_, a name, which according to Dr. Shaw, the
Africans give to the antelopes. 2. In the cabinet of the Marquis de
Marigny is a kind of an offensive weapon composed of two sharp-pointed
horns about the length of a foot and a half which, by their double
flexion, seem to belong to a much smaller antelope than any of the
rest. It must be very common in the Indies, as their Faquirs, and other
priests, carry this sort of weapon as a mark of dignity. We shall call
it the _Indian antelope_, from its having the appearance of being only
a simple variety of the _African species_.
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