THE BLAAUWBOK 55 



These blaauwbok of 1800 were the last of their 

 race. 



The above list comprises all the more recent 

 occurrences of H. letccopkaeus, and mentions all 

 the stuffed examples now known to exist. There 

 is a frontlet of a bull blaauwbok in the Natural 

 History Museum : each horn is twenty inches long, 

 and bears twenty rings. No data concerning it 

 are known, though it has long been in the 

 National Collection. It is interesting to remember, 

 however, that this frontlet may have once belonged 

 to one of two famous naturalists. The horns 

 attached to the skin bought at Amsterdam by 

 Pennant, were twenty inches long and had twenty 

 rinofs on them : could the fate of Pennant's 

 specimen be traced, its horns might be found to 

 be identical with those on the frontlet above 

 mentioned. Aofain, Sir Hans Sloane's collection, 

 purchased in 1753, on the foundation of the 

 British Museum, contained several natural history 

 specimens from South Africa (such as a horn of 

 the white rhinoceros), and may well have included 

 relics of the blaauwbok — at that time a compara- 

 tively abundant antelope. Finally, there is still 

 in existence a most interesting relic of H. leuco- 

 phaeus, which seems to have been strangely 

 overlooked by naturalists. 



It has hitherto been supposed that the blaauwbok 

 is represented to-day only by stuffed specimens 



