colour and pattern as in _T. roualeyni_ and the other species of
this section of the genus. General colour a reddish yellow,
brighter on the hind-quarters, and distinctly blacker in the
dorsal region, where the hair assumes a dusky greyish-brown hue.
Body marked with four or five very distinct, mostly broad, white
stripes, a row of white spots running along above the belly and a
few white spots on the haunches. Hair on body shorter than in _T.
roualeyni_. No distinct collar of short hair round the base of the
neck, as in _T. roualeyni, T. sylvaticus_, and _T. scriptus_, the
entire neck being covered with a coating of short silky hairs of
the same length as those of the head, much shorter than those of
the body, and of a dusky, greyish-brown colour.
Young male redder in colour than the adult and equally strongly
marked with white.
The skull of a subadult male gives the following
measurements:—Basal length 8·25 inches, orbit to muzzle 4·6,
greatest width 3·75.
In the British Museum are a skull of the typical _T. roualeyni_
of the Limpopo, procured by Gordon Cumming, and a skin and skull from
the Zambesi obtained by Mr. Selous. There is also in the Museum a good
series of skins and skulls of this species from Zomba, Nyasaland, and
its vicinity, transmitted by Sir Harry Johnston and Mr. A. Sharpe, of
which we have already spoken, and from one of which our figures of the
adult skull (pp. 126, 127) have been taken. From British East Africa
the National Collection possesses the mounted adult male from Manda
Island presented by Sir John Kirk (and figured on our Plate XC., as
already mentioned), also a mounted female from the same source obtained
in British East Africa about one hundred miles inland at 6° S. lat.
Besides these there are Capt. Swayne’s specimens from the River Webbe
in the interior of Somaliland, already referred to.
We are not aware that any examples of this Bushbuck have been brought
to Europe alive.
_November_, 1899.
124. DELAMERE’S BUSHBUCK.
TRAGELAPHUS DELAMEREI, Pocock.
_Tragelaphus delamerei_, =Pocock=, Ann. & Mag. N. H., Jan. 1900.
Of about the same size as _T. scriptus_. Head ruddy brown on the
forehead, with a blackish band extending down the muzzle; cheeks fawn,
with two small white spots; no white stripe running inwards from the
corner of the eye; edge of upper lip and chin white; white patches at
upper and lower ends of throat small, the former only just traceable.
General colour of body dark yellowish brown above, paler below, and
gradually passing into yellowish fawn upon the shoulder and upon the
lower half of the hind-quarters. No traces of white stripes or spots
observable either upon the body or upon the hind-or fore-quarters. Fore
legs both outside and inside right up to the base yellowish brown,
blackish all down the front from above the knee to the fetlocks;
fetlocks and pasterns black, except for a pair of white spots on the
pasterns in front. Hind legs coloured like fore legs, but paler above
the hock and marked with a distinct white patch in front of the hock.
Tail white below, dark at the tip. A collar of short hairs round the
base of the neck. No long crest of hairs along the spine.
_Hab._ Somaliland.
A single nearly adult example of this species (fig. 102, p. 130),
remarkable for the absence of white on the inner sides of the legs
and on the body, was procured by Lord Delamere on his last sporting
expedition into Somaliland at a place called “Sayer,” and was kindly
presented by him to the British Museum.
The specimen in question was examined by the person who skinned it
for Lord Delamere, and, according to his evidence, was ascertained to
be of the _male_ sex. But in the face of its bearing no traces
of horns we are hardly disposed to accept this statement, which may
well have been made in error. Even, however, if we take it to be the
_female_ of a _Tragelaphus_, we are unable to refer it to any
known species, and we therefore insert it in what would seem to be its
proper place under the name attached to it by Mr. Pocock.
[Illustration:
Fig. 102.
Delamere’s Bushbuck.
]
The accompanying figure of Delamere’s Bushbuck has been prepared from
the typical specimen in the British Museum.
_November_, 1899.
[Illustration:
THE BOOK OF ANTELOPES. PL. XCI.
_J. Smit del. et lith._
_Hanhart imp._
The Broad Horned Antelope.
TRAGELAPHUS EURYCEROS.
_Published by R. H. Porter._
]
125. THE BROAD-HORNED ANTELOPE.
TRAGELAPHUS EURYCERUS (Ogilby).
[PLATE XCI.]
_Antilope_, sp., =Afz.= N. Acta Upsal. vii. p. 269, pl. viii. fig. 3;
=H. Sm.= Griff. An. K. v. p. 361 (?).
_Antilope eurycerus_, =Ogilby=, P. Z. S. 1836, p. 120; =Waterh.= Cat.
Mus. Zool. Soc. (2) p. 42 (1838); =Temm.= Esq. Zool. Guin. p. 190
(1853); =Huet=, Bull. Soc. Acclim. (4) iv. p. 468 (1887).
_Antilope (Addax) euryceros_, =Laurill.= Dict. Univ. d’H. N. i. p. 620
(1861).
_Tragelaphus eurycerus_, =Less.= N. Tabl. R. A., Mamm. p. 181 (1842);
=Wagn.= Schr. Säug., Suppl. v. p. 441 (1855); =Gray=, P. Z. S. 1850,
p. 144; =id.= Knowsl. Menag. p. 27, pl. xxiii. fig. 1 (horns) (1850);
=id.= Cat. Ung. B. M. p. 136 (1852); =id.= P. Z. S. 1861, p. 276;
=Gerr.= Cat. Bones B. M. p. 246 (1862); =Fitz.= SB. Ak. Wien, lix. pt.
1, p. 174 (1869); =Brooke=, P. Z. S. 1871, p. 485, pl. xxxix.; =Scl.=
P. Z. S. 1883, p. 35; =Thomas=, P. Z. S. 1891, p. 387; =Flow. & Lyd.=
Mamm. p. 347 (1891); =Ward=, Horn Meas. p. 158 (1892); =id.= Rec. Big
Game, p. 202 (1896); =Jent.= Cat. Mamm. Leyd. Mus. (Mus. Pays-Bas,
xi.) p. 172 (1892); =Lyd.= Horns and Hoofs, p. 254 (1893); =id.= Royal
Nat. Hist. ii. p. 275 (1894); =Pousarg.= Ann. Sci. Nat. iv. p. 81
(1897); =Trouess.= Cat. Mamm. p. 957 (1898); =Bryden=, in Ward’s Great
and Small Game of Africa, p. 454, pl. xiii. fig. 3 (1899).
_Euryceros euryceros_, =Gray=, Cat. Rum. B. M. p. 48 (1872); =id.=
Hand-l. Rum. B. M. p. 119 (1873); =Jent.= Cat. Ost. Leyd. Mus. (Mus.
Pays-Bas, ix.) p. 141 (1887); =id.= Notes Leyd. Mus. 1888, pp. 23–25;
=Büttik.= Reisebilder, ii. p. 380, cum fig. (1890).
_Tragelaphus albo-virgatus_, =Du Chaill.= Pr. Bost. Soc. N. H. vii. pp.
299–300 (1861); =id.= Expl. & Adv. Equat. Afr. p. 306, pl. (1861).
_Tragelaphus albovittatus_, =Gray=, P. Z. S. 1861, p. 276.
Vernacular Names:—_Trommé_ of the Mandingos (_Temminck_); _Elk_ of
Liberians and _Guin_ of the Veys in Liberia (_Büttikofer_); _Bongo_ of
Gaboon (_Du Chaillu_).
Height at the withers of the adult male about 43 inches. General colour
of the head and body bright chestnut, with a white spinal stripe
extending from the withers to the root of the tail, and about 14 or 15
transverse white stripes on the shoulders, flanks, and hind-quarters,
passing from the spinal stripe above on to the belly beneath. Head with
a patch of deeper colour upon the forehead, and extending about two
inches below the eyes. An angular =V=-shaped white mark extending
inwards from the eye on to the nose, interrupted in the middle line
by a narrow brown band; chin and lips white; two or three cheek-spots
large and sometimes fused together; inter-ramal area and upper end of
throat covered with hairs of a blackish hue; lower end of the throat
with a very distinct transverse white band; chest and belly covered
with short hair of a purplish-brown colour; area between the hind legs
and beneath the tail up to the anus white. Fore legs blackish from
the fetlocks to the knees, chestnut from the knees to the shoulders
externally; white at the bases close to the chest, as also above the
knees and between knees and fetlocks internally; a large white spot
on the front of the pasterns. Hind legs chestnut down to the fetlocks
on the outer side; front of the hocks and cannon-bones broadly white;
fetlocks blackish or brownish, both without and within; a white patch
on the pasterns as on the fore legs.
Hair short and close all over the body. No mane on the throat; hairs
along the nape reversed, but scarcely forming a mane, being merely
slightly elongated; behind the parting there is a short spinal mane.
Tail bovine, thinly covered with hairs of the same colour as those of
the body, and ending in a tuft of long hairs of a darker red tint[10].
Horns massive, rather smooth, with weak anterior basal crest,
amber-yellow tip, and a single twist; usually about 30 inches long
round the curve and about 25 in a straight line. A skull gives the
following measurements:—Basal length 14·5 inches, orbit to muzzle 8·5,
greatest width 6·25.
_Female._ Similar to the male in markings, but without horns, and
rather paler in colour and smaller in size.
_Hab._ Forests of the West-African coast-range, from Liberia to
Gaboon.
Whether the horn from Sierra Leone, figured and described by Afzelius
in his essay on Antelopes, published in the ‘Nova Acta’ of the Society
of Sciences of Upsala in 1795, and subsequently referred to by Hamilton
Smith and other authors, really belonged to the present species is
somewhat uncertain, although such may very possibly have been the
case. The first trustworthy introduction of this species to scientific
literature is therefore due to Ogilby, a well-known authority on the
Ruminants, who in 1836 established his _Antilope eurycerus_ in a
paper read before the Zoological Society of London on November the 22nd
of that year. Ogilby’s materials consisted of “two pairs of horns, one
attached to the skull, the other to the integuments of the head,” which
had then “long existed in the Society’s collection.” Their origin was
unknown, but they were believed to have come from Western Africa. These
specimens, we may add, are now in the British Museum, to which they
were transferred by the Zoological Society in 1858. One of the pairs
was figured by Gray in the volume of the ‘Gleanings from the Knowsley
Menagerie,’ published in 1850.
In 1853 Temminck recorded the existence of a pair of horns of this
species in the Leyden Museum, and gave its vernacular name as the
“Trommé” of the Mandingos of Western Africa.
With this exception no addition appears to have been made to our
knowledge of this Antelope until 1860, when Mr. P. B. Du Chaillu, who
had met with it during his excursions in the interior of Gaboon from
1856 to 1859, described it before the Boston Society of Natural History
as a new species, under the name _Tragelaphus albo-virgatus_. In
the report of his paper published in the ‘Proceedings’ of that Society
we find its locality given as the “forests about the head-waters of the
Fernand-Vaz in the Aschankolo Mountains, 60 miles south of the Equator,
and 140 from the coast.” In the narrative of his travels, published
in 1861, Mr. Du Chaillu writes of the same Antelope as belonging to
the fauna of the “Rembo Region,” the Rembo being one of the rivers
that flows from these mountains, and tells us that it is “very shy,
swift of foot, and exceedingly graceful in its motions.” The full-page
steel engraving that accompanies these remarks, which, by the kindness
of Messrs. Murray, we are enabled to reproduce (fig. 103, p. 134),
is stated to have been taken from a well-preserved specimen in his
collection. The native name is given as “Bongo.”
After describing his specimens in America, Mr. Du Chaillu brought them
to this country, and disposed of them to the British Museum.
[Illustration:
Fig. 103.
The Bongo Antelope.
(From Du Chaillu’s ‘Travels in Equatorial Africa,’ p. 306.)
]
The late Dr. J. E. Gray, who was not very friendly with the great
explorer, and had carried on a paper warfare with him in the ‘Athenæum’
journal, lost no time in bringing the specimens before the Zoological
Society, where he subjected them to a somewhat severe criticism.
The supposed new species of _Tragelaphus_, he pointed out, was
“evidently only a specimen of _Antilope eurycerus_ of Ogilby.”
This was, no doubt, correct, but at the same time Mr. Du Chaillu’s
skin, imperfect as it was, was the first specimen of the animal, except
the original two pairs of horns, acquired by the National Collection,
where it is now to be seen mounted in the Gallery, and allows an idea
to be formed of the brilliant colours of this splendid Antelope. It
will be found figured by Sir Victor Brooke, from a sketch by Wolf (put
upon the stone by Smit), in the Zoological Society’s ‘Proceedings’ for
1871. In the same article, is given a figure of the skull and horns
of this Antelope, taken from one of the type specimens in the British
Museum, which, by the kind permission of the Zoological Society, we are
enabled to reproduce on the present occasion (fig. 104).
[Illustration:
Fig. 104.
Head and horns of the Broad-horned Antelope.
(P. Z. S. 1871, p. 488.)
]
Besides Mr. Du Chaillu, the only travellers who have met with this
beautiful Antelope in its native wilds appear to have been Messrs.
Büttikofer and Stampfli, during their well-known researches in Liberia.
From Dr. Jentink’s article upon the mammals collected during their
explorations we learn that these naturalists obtained a complete
specimen of an adult male of this species near Hill Town, besides two
skins on the Junk River and the Mahfa River. In the second volume of
his ‘Reisebilder aus Liberia’ Herr Büttikofer gives a figure of the
Antelope in the text, and informs us that it lives in the forests and
feeds principally upon leaves of trees, on which it browses up to a
height of eight feet.
Besides the typical specimens of Ogilby’s _Antilope eurycerus_
and Du Chaillu’s _Tragelaphus albo-virgatus_, which, as already
mentioned, are now in the British Museum, the National Collection
contains a good mounted head of an adult male of this Antelope from
Fantee, which is accompanied by a flat body-skin, and the mounted
skeleton of an adult male from Gaboon.
We are not aware that any living examples of the Broad-horned Antelope
have ever reached Europe.
Our figure of this species (Plate XCI.) has been drawn by Mr. Smit from
the mounted specimen in the British Museum.
_November_, 1899.
[Illustration:
THE BOOK OF ANTELOPES, PL. XCII.
_Wolf del. Smit lith._
_Hanhart imp._
Angas’ Antelope.
TRAGELAPHUS ANGASI.
_Published by R. H. Porter._
]
126. ANGAS’ ANTELOPE.
TRAGELAPHUS ANGASI, Angas.
[PLATE XCII.]
_Tragelaphus angasi_, =G. F. Angas=, P. Z. S. 1848, p. 89, pls. iv. (♂),
v. (♀); =id.= Kaffirs Illustrated, p. 51, pl. xxix. (1849); =Gray=, P.
Z. S. 1850, p. 144; =id.= Knowsl. Menag. p. 27 (1850); =id.= Cat. Ung.
B. M. p. 138 (1852); =Proudf.= P. Z. S. 1850, p. 199; =Baldwin=, Afr.
Hunt. p. 76 (1854); =Gerr.= Cat. Bones B. M. p. 246 (1862); =Fitz.=
SB. Ak. Wien, lix. pt. 1, p. 174 (1869); =Brooke=, P. Z. S. 1871, p.
485; =id.= P. Z. S. 1878, p. 884 (cranial characters); =Buckley=, P.
Z. S. 1876, p. 285; =Thomas=, P. Z. S. 1891, p. 387; =Flow. & Lyd.=
Mamm. p. 347 (1891); =Scl.= P. Z. S. 1892, p. 98 (Shiré R.); =Ward=,
Horn Meas. p. 157 (1892); =id.= Rec. Big Game, p. 200 (1896); =Lyd.=
Horns and Hoofs, p. 252 (1893); =Scl.= P. Z. S. 1893, p. 729 (B. C.
Afr.); =Lyd.= Roy. Nat. Hist. ii. p. 275 (1894); =Rendall=, P. Z. S.
1895, p. 359 (R. Tembé); =Thomas=, P. Z. S. 1896, p. 798, 1897, p. 939
(B. C. Afr.); =Pousarg.= Ann. Sci. Nat. iv. p. 81 (1897); =Johnston=,
Brit. Centr. Africa, p. 305 (1897); =Rendall=, Novitat. Zool. v. p.
212 (1898); =Trouess.= Cat. Mamm. p. 957 (1898); =Selous=, =Sharpe=,
and =Neumann=, in Ward’s Great and Small Game of Africa, pp. 455–462,
fig. 39, & pl. xiii. fig. 4 (1899).
_Strepsiceros angasi_, =Turner=, P. Z. S. 1850, p. 171.
_Euryceros angasii_, =Gray=, Cat. Rum. B. M. p. 48 (1872); =id.= Hand-l.
Rum. B. M. p. 119 (1873).
Vernacular Names:—_Inyala_ of the Amatongas; _Bö_ of the Shiré
districts.
Height at withers of adult male about 42 inches; of lighter and more
graceful build than _T. eurycerus_. General colour of head,
neck, and body a slate-grey, with a tinge of yellowish red. Head with
forehead reddish, and area around eye fawn-coloured; upper lip and chin
white; two widely-separated white cheek-spots on each side; v-shaped
white nasal stripe distinct and mesially divided. Back of ear white
below, tan above. Neck distinctly darker in hue than the shoulder
and rest of the body; a transverse white patch at the lower end
of throat; no corresponding patch at upper extremity of throat.
Body from shoulder to root of tail marked with indications of about
fourteen pale transverse stripes, some six of these standing out more
clearly than the rest; a few white spots, mostly low down upon the
haunches. Tail nearly black above, at sides, and at tip; white below.
Fore legs black above the knee on the outer side and on inner side
halfway up to the chest; a large white patch above close to chest; knee
also white on inner side and behind; portion between knee and fetlock
a rich fawn-colour; fetlocks and pasterns black behind and above the
hoofs in front; a white spot on the inner side of fetlocks, and two on
front of the pastern. Hind leg coloured like the front leg, with the
front and inner side of the thigh and of the hock white, the two white
patches separated by a black band; no white patch on the inner side of
the fetlock.
Long mane of dark hair extending almost from chin along throat, chest,
and each side of belly, and fringing the front of the thigh almost to
the hock, and the back of it up to the root of the tail. There is also
a dorsal mane extending from the nape to the neck, reversed from the
base of the neck; the hairs black or brown in colour along the nape of
the neck from the occiput to the shoulder, tipped with white from the
shoulders to the tail. Tail cervine, thickly hairy throughout.
Horns black, pale amber-coloured at the tips, ridged in the basal
half; about 29 inches long round the curve, and 24 in a straight line;
usually with a single, and rarely with a double, curvature.
The skull of an adult male gives the following measurements:—Basal
length 12 inches, orbit to muzzle a little over 7, width almost 5.
_Female_ without horns and strikingly different from the male
in colour. General colour a bright chestnut. Sides of the body and
haunches marked with about eleven white stripes, those behind shoulder
reaching almost to the ventral surface; ventral surface pale yellow; a
few white spots on the haunches. Nose marked with a broad black band,
which extends laterally on to the muzzle; a narrow black dorsal stripe,
extending from the occiput to the root of the tail, intersected with
white where the lateral stripes cross it. No mane on any part of neck,
body, or hind-quarters.
_Hab._ South-eastern Africa, from Zululand to Southern Nyasaland.
The discoverer of this fine Antelope, the late Mr. George French Angas,
was an accomplished artist and traveller, and the author of several
books on Africa and Australia. Angas first met with this species
on the northern shores of St. Lucia Bay, in Zululand, during his
journeyings in that district in 1847. Here, he tells us, it inhabits
the low undulating hills, scattered with mimosa-bushes, which border
the northern shores of the Bay. On returning to England, Angas showed
his notes and sketches of this Antelope to the late Dr. Gray, who
assured him of its being an animal new to science, and communicated
them to the Zoological Society of London in the name of the discoverer.
Angas was not successful in obtaining specimens for himself, as the
Boers, he tells us, refused to part with them, and the two plates
which illustrate his paper in the Zoological Society’s ‘Proceedings’
were lithographed by Waterhouse Hawkins from his notes and sketches.
It should also be mentioned that the Antelope was named, not after
Angas himself, but after his father, Mr. George Fife Angas, of South
Australia, who, we are told, had always “taken great interest” in his
son’s travels and researches in natural history. In a folio work called
‘Kaffirs Illustrated,’ published in 1849, Angas again figured this
Antelope, on a plate containing representations of the male, female,
and young, but did not furnish any further particulars concerning its
life and habits.
The next observer of Angas’ Antelope in its native wilds appears to
have been a well-known hunter, Proudfoot, who met with it on the banks
of the Maputa River, about sixty miles above its embochure into Delagoa
Bay, and exhibited specimens of both sexes, shot by himself, at a
meeting of the Zoological Society of London on July 9th, 1851. On the
Maputa, Mr. Proudfoot stated, on exhibiting his specimens, that the
_Inyala_, as the natives call it, was at that time more plentiful
than on the Umcoozi or Umbelozi, in the same district, where it was
found, though rarely. “They occur in small troops composed of one ram
and four or five females, with their young: they always resort to the
densest bush, and browse chiefly on shrubs.”
In June 1854 the well-known African sportsman, William Charles Baldwin,
was in Amatonga-land, on a hunting expedition from Natal. On the 25th
of that month, as he tells us in his ‘African Hunting,’ he met with
the first “Inyalas” he had ever seen, and succeeded in bagging a fine
male, and subsequently more of them in the same district. A tinted
lithographic plate in Baldwin’s volume, drawn by Wolf, contains an
excellent representation of a group of these Antelopes.
In 1871 the late Sir Victor Brooke published in the ‘Proceedings’ of
the Zoological Society a figure of the head and horns of this Antelope,
taken from a specimen in his own Collection. This figure, by the kind
permission of that Society, we are now enabled to reproduce (fig. 105).
[Illustration:
Fig. 105.
Head and horns of Angas’ Antelope.
(P. Z. S. 1871, p. 487.)
]
The Hon. W. H. Drummond, another well-known sportsman, who was in South
Africa from 1867 to 1872, writes of the “Nyala” as perhaps the most
beautiful of all the Antelopes he had seen there. “Unfortunately,”
he says, “it does not exist except in low, fever-stricken districts,
and I have never seen it south of the Bombo Range, about 28° S. lat.,
where it frequents the densest thickets it can find, and is wary and
difficult to stalk.” Mr. Drummond also, in his volume on the ‘Large
Game of South and South-east Africa,’ has given a lithographic plate
with figures of both sexes of this animal.
When he wrote his ‘Hunter’s Wanderings,’ in 1881, Mr. Selous, our
leading authority on the game-mammals of South Africa, had never
seen a living example of this Antelope. But in September 1896 he
made a successful expedition to Amatonga-land in search of it, and
subsequently wrote an account of his adventures on this occasion in
‘The Field’ newspaper, from which, by his kind consent, we make the
following extracts.
Arriving at Lourenço Marques on September 21st, he was invited by a Mr.
Wissels, a Cape colonist of German extraction, to visit his station
near the junction of the Pongolo and Usutu Rivers, where Inyalas were
said to be plentiful, and arrived there after a long tramp of several
days through the swampy forests.
We will give Mr. Selous’s account of his hunt after Inyalas in this
district in his own words:—
“There were now abundant signs that I was approaching the haunts
of the beautiful Antelope I had come so far to seek, as _Inyala_
horns and skins were very much in evidence round Mr. Wissels’s
store, and several of the latter had manifestly been but recently
killed.
“All these animals, I was assured, had been shot by the Amatonga
within a short distance of the store, in the dense jungles lying
in the angle between the Usutu and Pongolo Rivers, which I could
now see covering some low ridges at a distance of not more than
six or seven miles from where we stood. Had it not been for the
rain, I should have gone on the same afternoon; however, I
gathered a good deal of information, and arranged for a start with
fresh carriers as early as possible the following day—my objective
point being the kraal of an Amatonga head-man named Gugawi, who, I
was told, lived a few miles up the Usutu River, on the very edge
of the jungle where _Inyala_ were said to be plentiful. I noticed,
however, that my informants were not over confident about my being
likely to shoot any of these animals.
“That night we had a most tremendous thunderstorm, the rain
falling in torrents; and, as the place in which I was sleeping was
not water-tight, I had rather a bad time of it, and was very glad
when day broke.
“The thunderstorm had cleared the air, and Sunday, Sept. 27,
dawned bright and clear, with every prospect of its being a fine
day. I had all my things packed up pretty early, and with four new
women-carriers, and accompanied by two men who knew the way to
Gugawi’s kraal, managed to get off about an hour after sunrise,
and reached my destination before 10 o’clock. On our way we
crossed the Usutu River—here a clear, swift-flowing stream, about
200 yards in breadth, running over a bed of sand. We waded across
it, and found the water quite shallow for the most part, and never
more than 3 feet deep.