CHAPTER X 



THE LARGER EAST AFRICAN ANTELOPES " 



The antelopes belong with right to the bovine family, 

 and seem to be animals which are a good deal like both 

 oxen and sheep, either of which species some antelopes re- 

 semble so much that they are not easily distinguished from 

 the same. How little radical difference, for instance, be- 

 tween an eland and an ox, or between a chamois, generally 

 classed among the goats, and a springbok, a puku, or even 

 a reed buck! 



The large antelope family is characterized from other 

 animals of their size by their graceful build and their 

 beautiful heads and horns, carried a great deal higher than 

 the level of the back. In some species of antelopes both 

 males and females have horns, but in a good many others 

 of the finest of those animals only the males carry horns. 

 The horns of the antelopes may be characterized by their 

 long, slender, and more or less cylindrical form, and al- 

 ways by the fact that they are never grown out into dif- 

 ferent branches as those of the elk or moose. A great 

 many of the antelopes carry most beautifully shaped horns, 

 some of them, like the young impala, having horns forming 

 a perfect lyre, while others, like the greater kudu, have 

 them grown up in graceful spirals in the shape of enor- 

 mous corkscrews. Some of the antelopes' horns show 



