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When there afterwards appeared more exact descriptions of an animal having a single horn only, but with several toes, a third species would have been made out, to which they gave the name of monoceros. These double references applied to the same species, are more frequent among ancient naturalists, because most of their works which have come down to us were mere compilations; even because Aristotle himself has frequently mingled facts borrowed from others with those which he had observed himself; and because the habit of critical examination was then as little known among naturalists as among historians.

From all these reasonings and digressions, it may be fairly concluded, that the large animals of the old continent with which we are now acquainted, were known to the ancients; and that the animals described by the ancients, and which are now unknown, were fabulous. It also follows, that the large animals of the three principal parts of the then discovered world could not have been long in being known to the nations which frequented their coasts.