46 NATURAL HISTORY ESSAYS 



like Campbell, and naturalists like Burchell, 

 journeyed into the far interior. Travelling became 

 easier and safer, while communication from place 

 to place became more rapid. A great expedition 

 sent out by the Cape of Good Hope Association 

 for exploring Central Africa, passed into Bechu- 

 analand, under the direction of that indefatigable 

 worker, Sir Andrew Smith. Yet in spite of all 

 this nothing was heard of the blaauwbok ; not a 

 solitary specimen, not a skull nor a footprint was 

 found between Cape Town and the tropic of 

 Capricorn. Sir Andrew even came to the con- 

 clusion that the leucophea could not be ranked as 

 a true species, and that the classical specimen 

 preserved at Paris was only an immature roan ante- 

 lope. Sir W. Cornwallis Harris searched for the 

 blaauwbok during his famous travels of 1836-7 

 with enthusiastic perseverance. " For a leuco- 

 phed,'' he says, " I would willingly have given a 

 finger of my right hand." No leucophea was 

 forthcoming, however, and Harris began to doubt 

 if it had ever existed ; he came to the inevitable 

 conclusion that by 1836, at any rate, it had been 

 exterminated. " If the blue antelope (Aigocerus 

 leucopheay- ever did exist it is now extinct." 

 Other naturalists followed these distinguished 



1 Aigocerus leucophea was the scientific name then employed to 

 denote the bhiauwbok : Hifpotragus lewophccus is its modern title, 

 originally conferred on the species by its iirst describer, Pallas, and 

 now resuscitated in accordance with tne law of prioiity. In this essay 

 leucophea and leucophimis are nsed as ecjuivalent synonyms. 



