452 AFRICAN GAME ANIMALS 



horns of the male shot by Kermit Roosevelt measure 47 

 inches along the curve. Ward records a specimen from 

 East Africa having a horn length of 61 inches. 



The Bongo 



Boocercus 



Boocercus Thomas, 1902, Jnn. l^ Mag. Nat. Ilisi., vol. X, p. 309; type B. 

 eurycerus isaaci. 



The genus was founded by Thomas on the character of 

 the horned female in distinction to the hornless females of 

 the genus Tragelaphus, to which it was formerly assigned 

 under the supposition that the females were hornless. The 

 horns are, moreover, much broader and heavier than in the 

 bushbuck. The coloration is quite different from that of the 

 most fully striped bushbucks, the pattern consisting of trans- 

 verse white stripes without the longitudinal stripes found in 

 the harnessed bushbuck. The tail is bovine like that of the 

 eland, not bushy as in the bushbuck. In the horned char- 

 acter of the female, the striped body, and bovine tail, the 

 bongo resembles the eland and may be considered its forest 

 representative. Only a single species is known, which ex- 

 hibits wide, discontinuous distribution. 



The genus occurs on the West Coast of Africa from the 

 mouth of the Congo River north along the Guinea coast to 

 Sierra Leone, and again appears in the highlands of Brit- 

 ish East Africa, where it ranges from the Mau Escarpment 

 to Mount Kenia. 



Bongo 



Boocercus eurycerus isaaci 



Native Names: Kikuyu, ndongoro; 'Ndorobo, stroya. 



Range. — Highland forest of British East Africa from 

 the Mau Escarpment eastward through the Kikuyu Escarp- 

 ment and the Aberdare Range to Mount Kenia. Not found 

 below an altitude of six thousand feet. 



The bongo was originally described by Ogilby as early as 

 1836, from a pair of horns of unknown origin. The color- 

 ation was not, however, known until 1861, when Du Chaillu 

 described it from a skin which he had obtained in the forests 



