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How is it possible, after this, to refer to rude figures traced by savages upon rocks[77]? Ignorant of perspective, and wishing to represent a straight horned antelope in profile, they could only give it a single horn, and thus they produced an oryx. The oryxes, too, that are seen on the Egyptian monuments, are probably nothing more than productions of the stiff style, imposed upon the artists of that country by their religion. Many of their profiles of quadrupeds shew only one fore and one hind leg; and this being the case, why should they have shewn two horns? It may perhaps have chanced that individuals have been taken in the chace, which had accidentally lost one of their horns, as pretty frequently happens to the chamois and saiga: and this would have been sufficient to confirm the error produced by these representations. It is probably in this way that the unicorn has recently been reported to be found in the mountains of Thibet.

All the ancients, however, have not represented the oryx as having only one horn. Oppian expressly gives it several[78], and Ælian mentions oryxes which had four[79]. Finally, if this animal was ruminant and cloven-hoofed, we know assuredly that its frontal bone must have been longitudinally divided into two, and that it could not, as is very justly remarked by Camper, have had a horn placed upon the suture.