Part 30

(P. Z. S. 1892, p. 99.)]

“Hartebeest horns vary greatly in shape and size. There are short massive horns and long pointed ones, and all the gradations between. Some curve forward, with the points thrown back; others curve outwards in the same plane as the forehead, the points turning upwards”.

Our coloured figure of this Antelope (Plate II.) has been drawn by Mr. Smit from the mounted specimen in the British Museum, obtained by Captain Swayne on the Haud plateau of Somaliland.

The woodcut (fig. 3, p. 24) gives a front view of the first skull and horns received from Captain Swayne, upon which Sclater based the species. This specimen is now likewise in the National Collection.

May, 1894.

THE BOOK OF ANTELOPES. PL. III.

Smit lith. Hanhart imp.

Cokes Hartebeest.

BUBALIS COKEI.

Published by R. H. Porter.]

5. COKE’S HARTEBEEST.

BUBALIS COKEI (GÜNTH.).

Antilope (Alcelaphus) caama, =Peters=, Von der Decken’s Reise, iii. pt. i. p. 9 (1869) (Lake Jipe).

Alcelaphus cokei, =Günth.= Ann. Mag. N. H. (5) xiv. p. 426, woodcut of horns (1884) (Usagara); =Thomson=, Masailand, p. 220, fig. (horns) (1885); =Johnston=, Kilimanjaro, p. 65 (1886); =Hunter=, Willoughby’s E. Africa, p. 288, pl. i. fig. 1 (head) (1889); =Von Höhnel=, Zum Rudolph-See, p. 819 (1892) (Lake Jipe); =Lugard=, E. Afr. i. p. 532, pl. (animal), and pl. p. 448 (horns) (1893).

Alcelaphus lichtensteini, =Pagenst.= JB. Mus. Hamb. ii. 1884, p. 40 (1885) (Masailand).

Alcelaphus cookei, =Lyd.= Field, lxxvii. p. 858, fig. (horns) (1891).

Bubalis cokei, =Ward=, Horn Meas. p. 61, fig. (head) (1892); =Lyd.= Horns and Hoofs, p. 197, fig. 38 (horns) (1893); =Jackson=, Big Game Shooting, i. pp. 285, 291.

VERNACULAR NAME:--Kongoni in Swahili (Lugard).

Size small, height at withers about 45 inches. General colour bright fawn all over, without dark markings, except that the lower lip is rather browner than the rest. Lower part of rump paler than the back, but not sharply defined. Tail long, its hairs reaching to the middle of the lower leg; black-crested for about its terminal three fourths. Face-hairs as in B. swaynei and B. tora. Glandular suborbital brushes short and not conspicuous.

Skull of medium proportions. Measurements:--basal length 14 inches, greatest breadth 5·2, muzzle to orbit 10·7, facial length 14·7, breadth of forehead 3·5.

Horns short and thick, bracket-shaped, the middle portions of the two sides in exactly the same straight line; their tips as long as their middle portions.

Hab. Eastern Africa, from Usagara northwards to Kilimanjaro and Masailand.

The first recorded specimen of Coke’s Hartebeest was a frontlet obtained by the German traveller Von der Decken in 1862 at Lake Jipe in Masailand. These horns were referred by Peters, in his account of the mammals of Von der Decken’s expedition, to B. caama of the Cape. But Sir Victor Brooke, who subsequently examined them at Berlin, as we know from his MSS., was convinced of their distinctness from the species of the Cape Colony, and had determined to call the new species after Von der Decken, although he never published the name. The subjoined figures (4 a and 4 b) were prepared under Sir Victor Brooke’s direction, and show a front view and a three-quarter view of these horns.

Horns of Bubalis cokei, front view.]

In June 1880 Col. the Hon. W. C. W. Coke, F.Z.S., a renowned English sportsman, started from Zanzibar on a shooting-expedition towards Mpapwa, along the caravan-route from the port of Saadani. On reaching the open plains on the plateau of Usagara he met with several herds of this Antelope, and obtained the frontlet (fig. 4 c), now in the British Museum, upon which the species was established by Dr. Günther.

Colonel Coke has kindly permitted us to refer to his journal, in which we find it recorded that he first met with this Hartebeest on June 28th, between the Missionary Stations of Mamboia and Mpapwa. On July 10th, when encamped near M’lalli, at the edge of the plains, though sick with fever, he went out and shot the animal, upon the head of which the species was afterwards based. After this Colonel Coke was taken so ill that he had to be carried back to the coast in a hammock, and was unable to shoot any more of these Antelopes.

In Sir John Kirk’s collection are two fine heads of this Hartebeest, likewise obtained by him in Usagara.

Proceeding northwards to the country round Kilimanjaro we find that Mr. H. C. V. Hunter, in his appendix to Sir John Willoughby’s ‘East Africa and its Big Game,’ records Coke’s Hartebeest as, at the date of his visit (1887), “quite the most common Antelope in the plains” of that district, “being found everywhere in immense herds.” From the same part of the British East-African Company’s territory we have seen and examined numerous other heads of this Hartebeest, including fine examples of both sexes belonging to Consul-General Holmwood, obtained during a shooting-excursion from Zanzibar to this attractive district.