The “Eland,” as it is now universally called, was well known to the early settlers of the Cape, where it received its name from some fancied resemblance to the Elk (_Alces machlis_), which is the “Eland” of the Hollanders and the “Elenn” or “Elendthier” of the Germans. It must have been size, we suppose, more than any other point of similarity, that induced the Dutchmen to apply such an unsuitable name to this animal. The old traveller Peter Kolben, about 1719, gave the first recognizable, though rather misleading, account of the Eland, which at that epoch was still found in the mountains near Capetown. In 1764 Buffon, in the twelfth volume of his ‘Histoire Naturelle,’ called it “Le Coudous,” or, at any rate, gave unmistakable figures of its horns under that name, which, we suppose, he had by some error transposed to it from the Kudu (_Strepsiceros capensis_). It was mainly upon Kolben’s _Alces capensis_ and Buffon’s “_Coudous_” that Pallas, in his first essay on the genus _Antilope_ (1776), based his _Antilope_ _oryx_, alleging that it “seemed to be” the _Antilope oryx_ of ancient authors! At the same time he states that he had examined a complete skeleton of this animal in the Museum of Prince William of Holland. Very unfortunately, in his second and amended list of the Antelopes, Pallas proposed to make a change in his former names by transferring the term “_oryx_” to another animal (the _Antilope bezoartica_ of his first memoir) and assigning the new name “_oreas_” to the Eland. This change, however, we may say, has been generally acquiesced in, and the name _oreas_ has been almost universally applied to the Eland, either specifically or generically, until modern days, when the zealous searchers after priority have resuscitated Pallas’s long-forgotten term “_oryx_.” This, indeed, seems certainly to be the earliest specific name applicable to the present animal and should, in strict justice, be adopted. As regards its generic name the Eland has been equally unfortunate. Desmarest, in 1822, first proposed to use “_Oreas_” as a subgeneric term for this form; and Gray, in 1850, employed it as a genus, combining it with the specific term “_canna_,” so that the name of the Eland became _Oreas canna_. As will be seen by our list of synonyms, this name was generally adopted, and has been in constant use for the present species for the last twenty years. We have, however, shown that “_oreas_,” as a specific term, must give place to “_oryx_”; and in like manner “_Oreas_” cannot stand as a generic term for the present animal, because it has been previously employed in zoology as a genus of Lepidoptera (1806) and as a genus of Mollusca (1808), both of which antedate Desmarest’s use of it in 1822. Under these circumstances it is necessary to adopt the next given name, _Taurotragus_ of Wagner, and the correct scientific name of the Eland, according to modern usage, will be _Taurotragus oryx_.