ANTELOPE. Although this word does not occur in our version of the Scriptures, yet there can be no doubt that in the Hebrew text several rumi nants to which it is applicable are indicated under different denominations. In scientific nomenclature, the term antelope, at first applied to a single species, has gradually become generical, and is now the designation of a tribe, or even of a family of genera, containing a great many species. According to present usage it embraces some species that are of considerable size, so as to be invariably regarded by the natives as having some affinity to cattle, and others delicate and rather small, that may be com pared with young deer, to which, in truth, they bear a general resemblance. The origin of the word is involved in great obscurity. In the Hexed meron of Eustathius, bishop of Antioch, who wrote in the reign of Constantine, we first find the name applied to an animal, which he describes as very swift, and hunted with difficulty. It had long horns in the shape of saws, with which it sawed trees of considerable size. When thirsty, it approached the Euphrates, and gamboled along its banks among brambles, wherein it was sometimes entangled, and then could be caught and slain.' It may be doubted whether the word antholops was, in the beginning of the fourth century of our era, a local Asiatic Greek paraphrase of the Arabic gazal, purporting a similar allusion to fine or blooming eyes; although the fact, if established, would prove that the Grecian residents in Asia viewed the greater antilopidm of our systems as be longing typically to the gazelle family, as we do now. Certain it is, however, that in the Greek and Latin writers of the middle and later ages, we find the same name, but so variously inflected that we are justified in concluding that it was drawn from some other source than the bishop's Hexameron; for it is written antalopos, analopos, aptalos: in Albertus Magnus, calopus and panthalops, which, though evidently Alexandrian Greek, Bochart would make the Coptic name for unicorn. Towards the close of the fourteenth century English heralds introduced the name, and tricked out' their ante lope as a supporter of the armorial bearings and cognizance of a younger branch of the Plantagenet family; and although the figures are monstrous, they bear clear indications of being derived at first from the saw-horned, and soon after from a real onyx.
In order to explain somewhat more fully the station of antelopes among the families of rumi nants, and point out more strictly the species we have to notice, as well as the general characters of the order, it may be desirable to give a short defini tion of ruminants, and thereby obviate the necessity of again recurring to them when other species of this section come under consideration. Ruminat ing animals are possessed of the singular faculty of chewing their food a second time, by means of the peculiar structure of their stomachs—a structure which enables them to force it back again into the mouth after a first deglutition. For this purpose,
all ruminants have four stomachs, whereof the three first are so disposed that the aliments can enter at will into any one of them, the oesophagus being placed at the point of their communication. The first and largest is the paunch, externally appearing as twofold, but internally divided into four slight partitions. In this is received the fodder simply broken by a first mastication, in which state it is transmitted into the second stomach, bonnet, or honeycomb bag, the walls of which are internally shaped like the cells of a honeycomb. Here the herbage is imbibed, and compressed, by its globular form, into small masses or balls, which are thus prepared to be forced upwards again into the mouth for a second trituration—a process always going on when cattle lie down, and are seen grinding their cheek teeth. After this it descends into the third stomach (manyfilies), which is the smallest, and is longitudinally furnished with folds, somewhat re sembling the leaves of a book ; from thence it passes into the fourth (the red), next in size to the paunch, and pear-shaped, the stomach properly so called, where the process of digestion is accomplished. All ruminants, moreover, are distinguished by cloven feet, by the want of incisor teeth in the upper jaw, and by all the grinders being furrowed like ridges on millstones.
This abstract of the characters of ruminating ani mals is here given because the faculty of chewing the cud, or rumination, cannot exist without the foregoing apparatus ; because that apparatus is found, without exception, to belong to all the species having bisulcate feet and the modified denti tion before noticed, and belongs to no other class or genus of mammalia. The numerous species of the order are distributed into three grand divisions, viz.-1st, those without horns, like the camel* and the musk ; 2d, those with deciduous horns, or such as are shed yearly, and replaced by a new growth, like the stag; and 3d, those which have persistent horns, consisting of a bony core, upon which a horny sheath is fixed, which grows by annual addi tions of the substance at the base, such as antelopes, goats, sheep, and oxen or neat cattle.
The antelopes, considered as a family, may be distinguished from all others by their uniting the light and graceful forms of deer with the permanent horns of goats, excepting that in general their horns are round, annulated, and marked with strim, slen der, and variously inflected, according to the sub division or group they belong to. They have usually large, soft, and beautiful eyes, tear-pits beneath them, and round tails. They are often provided with tufts of hair, or brushes, to protect the fore knees from injury ; they have inguinal pores ; and are distinguished by very great powers of speed. Among the first of the subordinate groups is the subgenus onyx, already named, consisting of five or six species. [DIsnoN ; JACHMUR ; THEO; TSEBI.] These will be noticed in their proper place, so far as they are mentioned in Scripture.—C. H. S.