GNIT, Ira ( from Hottentot gnu, nyu), or WILDE BEEST. A member of a remarkable genus (Con nochetes) of African antelopes, of which the best known species has been formerly described as made up of parts of an antelope, a buffalo, and a horse. The grotesque appearance of some species suggests this composite. (See Plate of ANTE LOPES.) The gnus form a genus of large, ungain ly animals, having horns in both sexes, and the withers higher than the haunches. The body and legs are antelope-like, but the head is so massive and broad as to resemble that of an ox. The muzzle is naked, the eyes are small, with a gland beneath each, whence sprout long, stiff hairs, and the horns, which in old age form a helmet over the forehead, are broad, black, and shaped like an African buffalo's, to which must be added the bovine-like circumstanee, not present elsewhere among antelopes, that the bone-cores are honey combed with cavities. Long hairs bristle about the chin and throat, and a stiff mane is borne upon the arched crest of the neck; while the tail is profusely hairy, like that of a horse, and sweeps the ground.
There are two species. The once `common' gnu, or white-tailed wildebeest (Connochetes gnu), formerly roamed all over South Africa, but by the end of the nineteenth century had become so scarce as to be extinct except in the remoter dis tricts; its dependence upon water denied it the desert, which has been the means of preserving some of its former associates. In this species
long hair fringes the chest, and the color is uni formly deep brown, with the tail white. In the other species, the brindled gnu or blue wildebeest (Connochetes taurina), whose habitat was north of the Zambezi, wherever plains extended, the chest has no long hair, the tail is black, and the general color duller, and marked with dark ver tical stripes upon the shoulders and neck. The former stands about four and a half feet high; the latter is somewhat larger. The females of both are lighter in hue than the males.
Gnus went about in bands of thirty or forty, and were fond of associating with quaggas and zebras, whose actions their own resembled. The old bulls were extremely watchful, and usually the first to discover danger and give the alarm. See AN TELOPE; and Plate Of ANTELOPES.
GOA, go'fi. A Portuguese colony on the Mala bar coast, India, extending from latitude 14° 54' to 15° 45' N., and from longitude 73° 45' to 74° 26' E. (Map: India, B 5). It is 60 miles long by 30 miles broad, and contains an area of 1080 square miles. It has been a Portuguese posses sion since its conquest by Albuquerque in 1510. Population, in 1891, 561,400. Capital, Panjim.