552 AFRICAN GAME ANIMALS 



contrast to the white chin, Hps, and throat. The back of the 

 ears is fuscous, and the inner side and the base are whitish. 

 The middle throat has a broad band, four inches long, of vi- 

 naceous-tawny, separating the white of the upper and lower 

 throat. The under-parts are white, with a streak of white 

 down the inside of each leg to the knee. The sexes are alike 

 in color and length of hair, the hair on the forehead in the 

 male being no longer or denser than in the female. The newly- 

 born young resemble the adults minutely in color. It is a rare 

 antelope, and only a limited number of specimens have been 

 available for study. They are chiefly from Mount Kenia, 

 Kijabe, and Ngong in the immediate vicinity of Nairobi. 



Desert Pygmy Antelope 



Nesotragus moschatus deserticola 



Native Name: Duruma, palla. 



Nesotragus moschatus deserticola Heller, 1913, Smith. Misc. Coll., vol. 61, 

 No. 7, p. 2. 



Range. — Desert or nyika country flanking the moist 

 littoral zone of the coast district, ranging, no doubt, from 

 the Tana River southward to the German border. 



The type specimens were collected by the describer at 

 the railway station of Maji ya Chumvi in the Taru Desert, 

 in which district they were found inhabiting dense, impene- 

 trable thickets of thorny bushes made up of several species 

 of acacias, aloes, euphorbias, and sansevierias. At dusk 

 they were occasionally seen on the edge of the thickets or 

 crossing over paths and wood roads intersecting them. A 

 mated pair were found associated, but no further instance 

 of their association in pairs was observed. 



The color is much lighter than that of moschatus, being 

 cinnamon-rufous, and only slightly darker on the median dor- 

 sal region. The white of the throat is almost continuous, be- 

 ing broken only by a narrow band of fulvous one inch wide. 

 The legs are light-colored and fulvous, but the pasterns are 

 dark-fuscous. The tail is very light whitish, only the median 

 dorsal line being dusky brown. The pelage is short, the hair 

 on the rump being but one inch long. The body size equals 

 that of moschatus. 



