Part 28

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.

The accompanying figure of Delamere’s Bushbuck has been prepared from the typical specimen in the British Museum.

November, 1899.

125. THE BROAD-HORNED ANTELOPE.

TRAGELAPHUS EURYCERUS (Ogilby).

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.

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.

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).

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.