The little or two-toed anteater (_Cyclopes_ or _Cycloturus didactylus_) is a native of the hottest parts of South and Central America, and about the size of a rat, of a general yellowish colour, and exclusively arboreal in its habits. The name scaly anteater is applied to the pangolin (q.v.); the banded anteater (_Myrmecobius fasciatus_) is a marsupial, and the spiny anteater (_Echidna_) is one of the monotremes (see MARSUPIALIA and MONOTREMATA).
ANTE-CHAPEL, the term given to that portion of a chapel which lies on the western side of the choir screen. In some of the colleges at Oxford and Cambridge the ante-chapel is carried north and south across the west end of the chapel, constituting a western transept or narthex. This model, based on Merton College chapel (13th century), of which only chancel and transept were built though a nave was projected, was followed at Wadham, New and Magdalen Colleges, Oxford, in the new chapel of St John's College, Cambridge, and in Eton College. In Jesus College, Cambridge, the transept and a short nave constitute the ante-chapel; in Clare College an octagonal vestibule serves the same purpose; and in Christ's, Trinity and King's Colleges, Cambridge, the ante-chapel is a portion of the main chapel, divided off from the chancel by the choir screen.
ANTE-CHOIR, the term given to the space enclosed in a church between the outer gate or railing of the rood screen and the door of the screen; sometimes there is only one rail, gate or door, but in Westminster Abbey it is equal in depth to one bay of the nave. The ante-choir is also called the "fore choir."
ANTE-FIXAE (from Lat. _antefigere_, to fasten before), the vertical blocks which terminate the covering tiles of the roof of a Greek temple; as spaced they take the place of the cymatium and form a cresting along the sides of the temple. The face of the ante-fixae was richly carved with the anthemion (q.v.) ornament.
ANTELOPE, a zoological name which, so far as can be determined, appears to trace its origin, through the Latin, to _Pantholops_, the old Coptic, and _Antholops_, the late Greek name of the fabled unicorn. Its adoption by the languages of Europe cannot apparently be traced farther back than the 4th century of our era, at which date it was employed to designate an imaginary animal living on the banks of the Euphrates. By the earlier English naturalists, and afterwards by Buffon, it was, however, applied to the Indian blackbuck, which is thus entitled to rank as _the_ antelope. It follows that the subfamily typified by this species, in which are included the gazelles, is the one to which alone the term antelopes should be applied if it were employed in a restricted and definable sense.