276 NATURE AND SPORT IN SOUTH AFRICA 



now adorn the national collection at South 

 Kensington. 



These beautiful examples and Mr. Rothschild's 

 Tring specimen are by far the finest now in Europe. 

 But it is to be noted that, as in the case of the 

 blesbok, its allied species, the wonderful colouring 

 and most singular glaze-like bloom of the coat fades 

 a good deal after death. Few antelopes' skins, 

 indeed, retain in the stuffed condition the sheen and 

 brilliancy that they exhibit in life. This remark 

 applies with even more force to the skins of many 

 notable birds of plumage. 



In the days of its pride, the bontebok flourished 

 in a wide habitat extending from the Yaal river 

 even so far south in Cape Colony as Swellendam, 

 close to the shores of the Indian Ocean. Le Yaillant, 

 and other travellers of the last century, speak 

 of its abundance, and Sir John Barrow, a most 

 painstaking collector of zoological facts and a 

 reliable authority, mentions that these antelopes 

 had formerly been as plentiful in Swellendam as 

 springboks upon the Karroo, a very suflicient evi- 

 dence of their vast numbers. But even in Barrow's 

 time (1797) the bontebok was becoming much scarcer 

 in this southern habitat, a fact not very surprising 

 when one considers its proximity to Cape Town. 

 Upon the northern plains, just south of the Orange 

 Eiver, in the neighbourhood of the present town of 

 Hanover, Barrow found this antelope in immense 



