Part 61

Antilope zebrata,“=Robert=, Echo du Monde Savant, 1836”; =Gerv.= Dict. Sci. Nat., Suppl. i. p. 267 (1840); =id.= Hist. Nat. Mamm. ii. p. 202 (1855).

Antilope zebra, =Gray=, Ann. Mag. N. H. i. p. 27 (1838); =Less.= N. Tabl. R. A., Mamm. p. 176 (1842).

Cephalophorus zebra, =Gray=, List Mamm. B. M. p. 163 (1843).

Damalis (?) zebra, =Gray=, Knowsl. Men. p. 22 (1850); =id.= P. Z. S. 1850, p. 142; =id.= Cat. Ung. B. M. p. 129 (1852); =id.= Cat. Rum. B. M. p. 45 (1872).

Cephalophus doria, =Jent.= N. L. M. vii. p. 270, pl. ix. (skull, ♀) (1885) (Liberia); =id.= op. cit. x. p. 21, pls. ii. (animal), iii. (skull, ♂) (1887); =id.= Cat. Ost. Leyd. Mus. (Mus. Pays-Bas, ix.) p. 133 (1887); =Büttikofer=, Reisebild. Liberia, ii. p. 377, pl. xxix. (animal) (1890); =Jent.= Cat. Mamm. Leyd. Mus. (op. cit. xi.) p. 164 (1892).

Cephalophus doriæ, =Thos.= P. Z. S. 1892, p. 424; =Ward=, Horn Meas. p. 77 (1892); =Lyd.= Horns and Hoofs, p. 211 (1893).

VERNACULAR NAME:--Mountain-deer of Liberians (Büttikofer).

Size small. General colour pale rufous, broadly banded with black. Face, ears, neck, and shoulders rufous or chestnut, except the nasal region, which is blackish. Back from withers to rump pale rufous, conspicuously banded transversely with deep shining black. Under surface from chin to anus pale rufous, slightly paler than the ground-colour between the bands. Limbs rufous, but with broad black patches on the outer surfaces of the forearms and lower legs, and with the phalanges black all round. Heels with large glandular tufts of black hair on their postero-inferior surfaces. Tail rufous, more or less mixed with black above, white below.

Horns short, in the same line as the nasal profile, in the male barely two inches long, conical, tapering, sharply pointed, their greatest basal diameter going about 2½ times in their length; in the female less than one inch in an adult, smoother than in the male, but otherwise similar in character.

Skull stoutly built. Nasal region broad, flat, parallel-sided. Anteorbital fossæ very shallow. Frontal region not specially swollen. Horn-cores so pressed downwards and backwards as to cause marked depressions behind and below them on the parietals. Palate with its three posterior notches about level.

Dimensions:--♂. Height at withers 16 inches, ear 2·9, hind foot 6·8 (in a female, rather older, 7·3).

Skull: basal length 5·8 inches, greatest breadth 2·8, orbit to muzzle 3·4.

Hab. Interior of West Coast of Africa, from Liberia to Sierra Leone.

The flat skins of this Antelope, so remarkable for their transverse black bands, first attracted the attention of naturalists in 1832, when they were brought before the Committee of Science and Correspondence of the Zoological Society of London by Mr. E. T. Bennett, then Secretary of the Society. Mr. Bennett considered them as belonging “not improbably” to some species of Antelope, to which, however, he did not venture to give a name. They were supposed by Gould (then the Zoological Society’s taxidermist), who had obtained them, to have been received from Algoa Bay; but there is no doubt that this was an error, and that these flat skins, some of which are even now occasionally brought to this country, are from Sierra Leone and the adjoining districts of Western Africa.

For some years this subject appears to have slept, but was revived in 1836 by Mr. Ogilby, who, in the course of some remarks upon the preserved specimens of Antelopes in the Zoological Society’s Museum, took the opportunity of assuring his hearers that the skins described by Mr. Bennett belonged to a “real Antelope” and that he hoped shortly to “have an opportunity of describing it in detail under the name of Antelope doria.”

Some two years later the late Dr. Gray proposed the name “Antilope zebra” for the same animal, based upon a skin received by the British Museum from Sierra Leone. Gray recognized it as being evidently the same as that previously described by Bennett, and gave no reason for proposing to alter its name.

About the same time similar imperfect flat skins attracted the attention of M. Robert, of Paris, who shortly described them in a communication to the ‘Echo du Monde Savant’ of 1836 under the name Antilope zebrata. But there is no doubt, we think, that “doria” was the first published specific appellation of this Antelope, and ought to be adopted. “Doria” is stated by Gray (Cat. Ung. p. 129) to have been the Christian name of Mr. Ogilby’s wife.

In his ‘List of Specimens of Mammals in the British Museum,’ published in 1843, Gray assigned this species to the genus Cephalophorus, i.e. Cephalophus. In his subsequent Catalogues he transferred it to the genus Damalis (i.e. Damaliscus),“on account of the dark mark on the outside of the limb.”

From the flat skins in the British Museum and the Zoological Society’s collection, Fraser, in 1849, gave a partly imaginative figure of this Antelope in his ‘Zoologia Typica.’

It was more than 50 years after the imperfect description of this problematical Antelope from the flat skins before science obtained correct information as to its proper characters and position in the system.

During the celebrated expedition of the naturalists of the Leyden Museum to Liberia in 1879 and following years Mr. Büttikofer first obtained perfect specimens of this Duiker on the St. Paul’s River. These were described by Dr. Jentink in the seventh volume of the ‘Notes from the Leyden Museum’ in 1885, and a figure was given of the skull. In the succeeding volume of the ‘Notes’ Dr. Jentink gave fuller particulars respecting this welcome rediscovery, and informed us that, as shown by the series of specimens collected by Mr. Büttikofer and his fellow travellers, this Antelope is not uncommon in certain parts of Liberia. The “Mountain-deer,” as the Americanized Liberians call it, does not occur in the coast-district, but is found in the mountainous terrain of the interior. Dr. Jentink gave coloured illustrations of the male, female, and young of this Antelope, together with representations of the skull of the adult male, the skull figured in the previous volume having been that of a female.

In the second volume of his ‘Reisebilder aus Liberia,’ published in 1890, Mr. Büttikofer tells us that he first saw a living example of this species in the forest near Soforeh Place, and recognized it, with much delight, as the “Mountain-deer” of which he had heard so much spoken. Here he captured a young one alive, and subsequently found the skull of the mother, which was wounded but not obtained on that occasion. In his second expedition to Liberia, Mr. Büttikofer and his companions procured a full series of examples of this beautiful species. Mr. Büttikofer remarks that the weight of a full-grown example of this animal ranges from 40 to 50 lbs., and that a specially remarkable development in its structure is that of the hairs on the hind edge of the tarsus, which form a sort of brush.

Our figure of this Antelope (Plate XX.) has been prepared by Mr. Smit from a stuffed specimen of an adult male in the British Museum obtained on the Du Queah River in Liberia during Mr. Büttikofer’s second expedition. In the same collection there is a skin of an adult female from the same locality, and the skeletons of both these animals. The flat skins which were the types of the specific terms “doria” of Ogilby and “zebra” of Gray are likewise in the National Collection.

August, 1895.

31. THE BLACK DUIKER.

CEPHALOPHUS NIGER, GRAY.

Cephalophus niger, =Gray=, Ann. Mag. N. H. (1) xviii. p. 165 (1846); =id.= List Ost. B.M. p. 57 (1847); =id.= Knowsl. Men. p. 10, pl. vii. (animal) (1850); =id.= P. Z. S. 1850, p. 123; =id.= Cat. Ung. B. M. p. 84 (1852); =Gerr.= Cat. Bones Mamm. B. M. p. 236 (1862); =Fitz.= SB. Wien, lix. pt. 1, p. 166 (1869); =Gray=, P. Z. S. 1871, p. 597; =id.= Cat. Rum. B. M. p. 27 (1872); =id.= Hand-l. Rum. p. 96 (1873); =Jent.= Cat. Ost. Leyd. Mus. (Mus. Pays-Bas, ix.) p. 132 (1887); =id.= N. L. M. x. p. 20 (1887) (Liberia); =Büttikofer=, Reisebild. Liberia, ii. p. 376 (1890); =Jent.= Cat. Mamm. Leyd. Mus. (Mus. Pays-Bas, xi.) p. 162 (1892); =Thos.= P. Z. S. 1892, p. 425; =Matach.= Mittheil. deutsch. Schutzgebiet, vi. p. 81 (1893); =Lyd.= Horns and Hoofs, p. 212 (1893).

Antilope pluto, =Temm.= Esq. Zool. Guin. pp. 194,214 (1853); =Wagn.= Schr. Säug., Suppl. v. p. 422 (1855).