460 AFRICAN GAME ANIMALS 



by that of the white rhinoceros, which has the same range in 

 the Bahr el Ghazal, but is widely isolated from its very 

 close ally the southern white rhinoceros of South Africa. 



The giant eland was discovered by Martin Theodore von 

 Heuglin during his travels in the White Nile region in 1863. 

 He described the species from a pair of horns collected 

 somewhere near the present position of Wau, probably 

 east of it. Later, in 1874, Doctor Georg Schweinfurth pub- 

 lished the account of his travels in the Bahr-el-Ghazal 

 region in which he referred to the eland occurring about the 

 Lehssy River and the village of Sabby in the same vicinity. 

 During the last fifteen years specimens have been shot in the 

 Bahr el Ghazal by various sportsmen, notably by Colonel 

 Sargeant Boardman, Captain Haynes, Leo Franco, Cap- 

 tain H. R. Headlan, "Bimbashi" Collins, and Prince E. 

 Demidoff. More recently Colonel Roosevelt and his son 

 Kermit shot three specimens in the Lado Enclave, and very 

 recently F. C. Selous secured a female near Wau. The 

 species, in 1894, was confounded with the common eland 

 by Sclater and Thomas in the "Book of Antelopes," no 

 skins at that time being preserved in any museum, the 

 horns alone being represeni^ed. In April, 1905, Mr. A. L. 

 Butler published in the Proceedings of the Zoological Soci- 

 ety color descriptions of the two specimens shot by "Bim- 

 bashi" Collins, and pointed out the close agreement of these 

 with the Derby eland. Later in the same year the Honor- 

 able Walter Rothschild published in Novitates Zoologicae 

 a colored figure of a mounted head in the Cairo Turf Club 

 with a note indicating the close relationship of this form 

 and derbianus. 



The giant eland has the regular eland horns, although 

 very much magnified, but otherwise it resembles a bongo 

 almost as much as it does the common eland. It frequents 

 open country, covered by a growth of thorn scrub, its haunts 

 being much more like those of the common eland than like 

 those of the bongo; but it breaks the higher branches with 

 its horns like a bongo, something which we happen never 



