238 NATURE AND SPORT IN SOUTH AFRICA 



that naturalists and admirers of antelopes may now 

 enjoy a prolonged inspection of these very interest- 

 ing beasts. It seems to me, however, that the 

 colouring of these antelopes is in London much 

 duller and less brilliant than in the sun-drenched 

 veldt of South Africa. This peculiarity, which I 

 have noticed in the giraffes and other animals in 

 captivity, is one for which I suppose our dull and 

 sunless climate is greatly answerable. A life of 

 nature and of freedom, too, as opposed to a life of 

 captivity, must be held somewhat accountable for 

 this difference in colouring. There have not been 

 many hartebeests exhibited at the Regent's Park 

 Gardens. Until 1869 there had been but two shown, 

 and there have been few since. And, thanks to the 

 increasing difficulty of procuring all the larger and 

 rarer antelopes, I fear not many more are destined 

 to adorn the Gardens after the lives of the present 

 pair. 



A form of hartebeest (now known as Jackson's 

 hartebeest) very closely resembling the South Afri- 

 can species, although not found immediately north 

 of the Zambesi, seems to be widely distributed in 

 Central and East Africa. Schweinfurth found this 

 animal, which he and others long mistook for the 

 true hartebeest, in considerable numbers in the heart 

 of the continent just north of the equator. In 

 South-Eastern Africa and just beyond the Zambesi, 



