WATERBUCKS AND REEDBUCKS 515 



in the neighborhood of water, they sought it merely to drink. 

 They were not very wary. They were grazers, hke the rest 

 of this genus. Like the common kob they went in big 

 bands, each composed of ewes and young rams with one or, 

 rarely, two or three old rams; and the old rams were also 

 found singly, and occasionally the young rams were in small 

 parties by themselves. The old rams were strikingly con- 

 spicuous, with their deep rich brown, almost black, coats, 

 and the sharply contrasted black and white markings on 

 their faces. Whether this dark coat is a permanent mark 

 of advanced age, or whether the old rams only assume it 

 seasonally, we do not know; some of the rams with horns 

 as fully developed as those of any we saw were not in this 

 adult pelage. It is certainly partly a matter of age and 

 partly a matter of individual peculiarity. The young rams 

 and ewes were a reddish-yellow, like the ewes of the white- 

 withered lechwi. 



Vaughn's kob, which we found in the dry, thorn-studded 

 flats beside the Bahr el Ghazal, is apparently only a color 

 phase of the white-eared kob. Its habits were precisely the 

 same. Watching a ram that stood almost concealed by tall 

 grass, we were struck by the way in which its presence was 

 betrayed by the incessant wagging of the ears, to drive 

 away the biting flies. The ram stood otherwise motionless; 

 and when we were too far off for its partly screened and 

 dimly seen shape and color either to conceal or reveal it, 

 the motion of its ears attracted attention. 



The most marked character in this long-known race is 

 the white ear which in old adult males is wholly white with 

 no trace of a darker tip. In immature specimens and in the 

 females the ears are ochraceous or buffy with dark-brown 

 tips. Another striking characteristic of this race is the dark- 



