Gazelle, gazella, quadruped animal with cloven hooves; there are many different species. M. Perrault has described seven African gazelles , the largest of which was of the size and shape of a buck; they had equally short hair. This animal was white on the stomach, blackish on the tail end, and brown along a stripe which ran from the eye to the snout, and tan on the rest of the body. The skin was very black and very glossy. All of these gazelles had large ears that were bald inside, where the skin was black and smooth like ebony; the eyes were big and black; the horns were also black, ribbed across, hollow halfway down their length, pointed at the ends, rather upright, but slightly turned out near the middle; drawing closer to each other near the end, like arms of a lyre; they were fifteen inches long and ten lines in diameter at the base; they were round in females, slightly flattened in males and more curved back. The snout resembled the snout of goats; that of the males was flatter than that of the females. On the palate, there was a thick, scaly skin, and numerous taste buds inside the lips.

Gazelles are ruminants; the ones in question here did not have incisors in the upper jaw; there were eight bottom teeth, wider at the ends than at the root: the two in the middle were as wide as the other six all together. The tail of the females was covered with long, blackish hair, flat and wide at its beginning, narrower at the end, with hair descending to the hock and being strong like that of a horse: in the males, it was softer and only slightly longer than the hair of the rest of the body. On the front legs, below the knee there was hair that was stronger and longer than that of the rest of the leg; it laid flat on the right and left like the tuft of a horse; and the skin was thicker in this place than elsewhere. The front of the hooves was formed by spurs and the back by the skin that formed the sole of the foot, and was not supported by horns of the spurs, as on the stag, the buck, and other animals with cloven hooves. The gazelles ’ hooves were split in a particular way; the two spurs could be quite a distance from each other and were joined together by a skin that stretched easily; there were only two breasts and two nipples. Next to and below each breast in the groins were two shallow cavities with skin that was hairless and dotted with grains formed by small glands, pierced in the middle from which a smooth substance came out. Mémoires pour servir à l’histoire naturelle des animaux. Première partie . [1]

1. The reference is to Claude Perrault, Mémoires pour servir à l’histoire naturelle des animaux (1676), available in English as The Natural History of Animals: containing the anatomical description of several creatures dissected by the Royal Academy of Science at Paris (London, 1702).