572 AFRICAN GAME ANIMALS 



closest inspection. We have in vain striven to find even 

 minute inequalities on cliffs up which we have seen him 

 easily make his way. He is, however, one of the smallest 

 of the antelopes, so that he has little difficulty in carrying 

 his weight on the tiny points of his stubby hoofs. The klip- 

 springer has low withers, with full, rounded hind quarters, 

 is short-legged, and has rather a heavily built appearance. 

 He is abbreviated at both his extremities, being extremely 

 short-necked, short-snouted, and short-tailed; indeed, the 

 tail is a mere rudiment, not evident to the eye. In pelage 

 he is strikingly peculiar among African antelopes. The hair 

 is very coarse and pithy and closely resembles that of the 

 American pronghorn and to a less degree the hair of the 

 whitetail deer. 



The horns are short and parallel in direction, arising 

 vertically above the orbits, and are ringed at the base. 

 They are usually confined to the male sex, one race alone 

 exhibiting horns in the female sex. There is no sexual dif- 

 ference in coloration or size, nor is there any appreciable 

 age difference in coloration, the young being minutely simi- 

 lar to the adults in appearance. The genus to-day comprises 

 a single species with several geographical races. One fossil 

 species is known from the Pliocene of France. Klipspring- 

 ers are confined to eastern Africa from the highlands of 

 Abyssinia and the adjacent Red Sea coast south through the 

 Rift Valley and coast drainage to the extreme southern tip 

 of Africa. 



This lively and interesting little antelope is found on the 

 rocky hills throughout East Africa. In the ordinary East 

 African form the females have horns, in the desert form 

 which occurs from the Northern Guaso Nyiro northward the 

 females are hornless. It is an extraordinary climber and 

 jumper, bounding among the cliffs with absolute sure-footed- 

 ness. The tiny hoofs — which, like the brittle hair, are unlike 

 those of any other African antelope — enable it to perch on 

 the smallest pinnacle, and to climb by means of the most 

 trifling cracks and irregularities in a rock surface; and it will 



