THE WHITE-TAILED GNU 261 



fancies), were most amusing. One could not help 

 but notice, too, the singularly bovine characteristics 

 exhibited in the head. The Boers were really not so 

 far out as usual when they christened the gnu in 

 their own homely fashion '' wildebeest " — wild cattle. 

 True antelopes they no doubt are, yet they exhibit 

 strong traces of a link between the bovine and the 

 antelopean race. The brindled gnu (blue wildebeest) 

 exhibits this strong bovine type about the head also. 

 The broad flattened nostrils are singularly ox-like. 

 I brought home, amongst other specimens, the head 

 of a young three-quarter grown bull, shot on the 

 Botletli river in 1890. The horns in this specimen 

 have scarcely begun to make the big outward and 

 inward curve seen in the mature animals, and the 

 strong bovine look is very marked. An Englishman, 

 who had never seen these animals in the wild state, 

 was, not long since, hunting in Khama's country. 

 The spoorers at length brought him rather suddenly 

 within sight of a small troop of blue wildebeest. 

 The Englishman at first took them to be merely 

 some native cattle grazing, and the animals, taking 

 alarm, galloped off, and easily escaped, much to the 

 chagrin of the native hunters. 



Now that some few specimens of the white-tailed 

 gnu are to be obtained in Europe, it would surely be 

 a good opportunity for the authorities of our various 

 Natural History Museums to acquire a good 



