MAMMALIA OF SOMALI LAND. 467 



came on a place where they had stalked two Oryx, but bad failed to 

 catch them. The sandy ground was lorn up with the footprints 

 of the lions and of the fleeing Ory.v ; the lions, however, appeared from 

 the tracks to have given up almost immediately, as they had only 

 gone fast for about 40 yards. The Oryx has no suborbital sinus. Tt 

 is independent of water. The skin is used by the Somalis for making 

 their shields. I was told that they ride them down. 



A single horn is also used by them as a stabbing weapon in a fray, 

 and I was told that one of the men of a native regiment was stabbed 

 and killed with one in a night attack on a zereba in an expedition 

 from Aden made at the end of 1889. 



Oreotragiis saltatrix. 



This small hill antelope is occasionally met with in the Golis 

 mountains. An old male I shot measures 18 inches at the shoulder, 

 and 3 feet from tip of nose to end of tail. The hair is coarse and long. 

 Each hair is tipped with yellow, a blackish- brown in the middle and 

 lighter at the base, producing a colour very like that of a golden 

 plover. The females are hornless. The horns of the males are short, 

 stout, round spikes, straight and slightly inclined forward, between 3 

 and 4 inches long, and are slightly wrinkled at the base. The head 

 is short and broad. The pasterns are very upright, and the cleft 

 between the hoofs very long ; the hoofs themselves are short and round. 

 Thev go in pairs, and are found at the tops of the ridges of the hills, 

 where the boulders of rock crop up out of the ground. When alarmed 

 thev utter a sound something like a loud sneeze. They seem to 

 frequent the same spot. I saw a pair once low down in a ravine 

 among the thick bush, but as a rule they keep in the neighbourhood 

 of rocks. As far as I could make out, the Somalis don't eat the klip- 

 springer. The one I shot fell dead and could not be hallaled, so they 

 would not have eaten it anyhow, but I understood them to say they 

 never eat the meat of this antelope. 



Equus [asinus) somalicus. 



This ass was first described in the P. Z. 8., 1884, p. 540, where a 



coloured plate of one is also given. Mr. Sclater says : " The Somali ass 



differs from that of the Nubian Desert in its generally paler and 



more greyish colour, in the entire absence of the cross stripe over the 



