Part 49

From the southern part of its range the British Museum has one of the original skulls from the River Juba district upon which the species was founded, and three skulls and some separate horns from the extreme south of the Somali coast, obtained by Sir John Kirk.

September, 1898.

GENUS IX. DORCOTRAGUS.

Type Dorcatragus, Noack, Zool. Auz. xvii. p. 202 (1894) D. MEGALOTIS.

Size very small, smaller than in any Gazelle. Ears large. Tail short. False hoofs minute; horny part of main hoofs short, but the internal pad to the hoof broad and thick; position of limbs in standing almost as in Oreotragus. No Gazelline head-markings, but a dark lateral band present on the sides of the body.

Skull broad and short. Nasals short and premaxillæ long, the structure in this region recalling that in Madoqua. Anteorbital region with a very small and shallow lacrymal fossa. Bullæ large and inflated. Premolars 3/3, the anterior very large.

Horns short, straight or faintly curved forwards, not unlike those of Raphiceros, and quite different from those of any true Gazelle. Female hornless.

Range of the Genus. Restricted to Somaliland.

One species only.

THE BOOK OF ANTELOPES, PL. LXXV.

Smit del. et lith.

The Beira.

DORCOTRAGUS MEGALOTIS.

Hanhart imp.

Published by R. H. Porter.]

109. THE BEIRA.

DORCOTRAGUS MEGALOTIS (MENGES).

Behra, =Menges=, Peterm. Mitth. xxxi. p. 454 (1885) (Hekebo plateau).

Beira, Scl. P. Z. S. 1892, pp. 102, 118; =Swayne=, P. Z. S. 1892, p. 308.

Oreotragus megalotis, =Menges=, Zool. Anz. xvii. p. 131 (1894); =Swayne=, Seventeen Trips to Somaliland, p. 321 (1895).

Dorcotragus megalotis, =Noack=, Zool. Anz. xvii. p. 202 (1894); =Hoyos=, Zu den Aulihan, p. 186 (1895); =Elliot=, Publ. Chicago Mus. Zool. i. p. 135 (1897) (Hargeisa).

VERNACULAR NAME:--Beira of Somalis (Swayne).

Size about as in the Steinbok or Grysbok; height at withers 20 inches in an adult male. General colour of neck and back a peculiar purplish grey, very finely grizzled with white, the extreme tips of the hairs being this latter colour. Scarcely a trace of a light lateral band, but a distinct dark one present, brownish, passing quite across the shoulder, and extending behind on to the sides of the rump. Belly not, as is usual, pure white throughout, but only white on the axillæ and groins, the remainder pale yellowish fawn, or even orange-fawn, this colour also extending on to the outer sides of the forearms and thighs; rest of limbs becoming darker fulvous to the hoofs. Head bright fulvous, quite different to the neck; area round eyes white, but no Gazelline facial streaks present. Tail short and rather bushy, coloured like the back, without darker tip.

Measurements of an old male skull:--Basal length 5·35 inches, greatest breadth 3·15, muzzle to orbit 3·2.

Horns ordinarily from 4 to 5 inches in length, the longest in the British Museum collection, one of Capt. Swayne’s, attaining 5½ inches.

Hab. Northern Somaliland; hills along the northern edge of the Haud.

On several occasions during the many years in which Sclater’s excellent correspondent Captain H. G. C. Swayne, R.E., was engaged on his various explorations and expeditions in Somaliland, he wrote about a “small red Antelope” found in the mountains which had the habits of a “Klipspringer,” but, according to native testimony, was of quite a different species. The existence of the same animal had also been recorded as long ago as 1885 under the name “Behra,” by Herr Josef Menges, in an account of his fourth journey in Somaliland, published in Petermann’s ‘Mittheilungen.’ Herr Menges met with the “Behra” on the Hekebo plateau (about 10° S. lat. and 44° 40´ E. long.), and had at one time a young living specimen of it in his possession.

After Herr Menges the “Behra” or “Beira,” as it is now usually called, after its Somali name, seems to have been first actually seen by Lieut. E. J. Swayne, of the Indian Staff Corps, Capt. Swayne’s brother, when he was in the Gadabursi country in the autumn of 1891. He observed two of them among very rugged hills, but failed to get a shot at them. He described them to Capt. Swayne as being “reddish Antelopes, rather larger than the Klipspringer, with small straight horns, which bounded away among the rocks in exactly the same manner as the Klipspringer.”