THE GAZELLES AND THEIR ALLIES 615 



Equatorial Impalla 



Mpyceros melampus suara 



Native Names: K.inyzmwesi, suara ; Swah'iW, szvala ; KWiamhz, ndadai. 

 Strepsiceros suara Matschie, 1892, Sitz.-Ber. Ges. Nat. Freu., Berl., p. 135. 



Range. — Occurring throughout German East Africa 

 and extending north in British East Africa as far as the 

 Tana River drainage and the northern slopes of Mount 

 Kenia, thence westward to the Turkwell River. In Uganda 

 it extends as far north as Ankole. 



The present name of suara, by which the equatorial 

 impalla is now known in zoology, was applied by Matschie 

 originally to an association of material consisting of the skull 

 and horns of a lesser koodoo, the skin of a female impalla, 

 and the painting of an impalla by Doctor Richard Bohm. 

 Some years afterward, upon discovering his mistake, Matschie 

 applied the name suara to the impalla in his monograph 

 on the mammals of German East Africa, published in 1894, 

 thus eliminating the koodoo element of the original descrip- 

 tion. The impalla was first recorded in 1863 from East Africa 

 by Speke and Grant, who met with it in German East Africa. 

 Since their time it has been reported by practically every 

 traveller in the region. Von Heuglin reported the impalla 

 from the White Nile, but it is now known not to occur in 

 the Nile Valley proper. This error may have been due 

 to a confusion of the impalla with the kob, which it resem- 

 bles closely in color and size, and from which it is not dis- 

 tinguishable in life except on close inspection. 



The equatorial impalla is distinguishable with some 

 difficulty from the typical form of South Africa. It differs 

 chiefly by its lighter or brighter tawny coloration and by 

 larger horns. From the Angola race, petersi, it is distin- 

 guishable by the absence of a black face blaze and ocular 

 stripes. Indications of these dark markings, however, are 

 often found on specimens from British East Africa, where 

 only the old males are without some faint trace of them. 



The dorsal coloration is bright cinnamon-rufous, and 

 extends well down on the sides, where it is sharply defined 

 against the ochraceous-buff of the sides, which covers a strip 

 about three inches wide extending the whole length of the 



