344 AFRICAN GAME ANIMALS 



color, being quite without the dark color markings, the dorsal 

 coloration being uniform cinnamon-buff, only the tip of the 

 tail and a blotch above the knees black. The extreme tip of 

 the ears is dark-brown, and the eye region has a faint indi- 

 cation of the dark diagonal streak. The snout is dark seal- 

 brown. The belly and the under-parts are buffy like the 

 sides. There is no indication of the dark dorsal, flank, or 

 throat stripes or face blaze, and the tip of the snout, which in 

 the adult is white, is quite dark seal-brown. The head and 

 the body stripes in the adults show much individual variation. 

 In a series of ten skins from the Northern Guaso Nyiro only 

 six have the dark preocular stripe free at its tip from the 

 face blaze or the gular stripe; in two of the others the 

 preocular stripes are fused with the face blaze where it ter- 

 minates on the snout, and in the last two they are confluent 

 with the dark gular and throat stripe, a condition charac- 

 teristic only of the gemsbok of South Africa. The dorsal 

 stripe also shows much variation, being quite obsolete in 

 one-half of the skins. The flank band is always present but 

 varies much in width. 



The flesh measurements of a large male are: head and 

 body, 67 inches; tail, i8>^ inches; hind foot, 20 inches; ear, 

 8 inches. The females measured show practically the same 

 dimensions. The females, as a rule, exceed the males in 

 length of horns, but their horns are usually more slender and 

 distinctly thinner at the base. In a series of twenty in the 

 National Museum, however, the longest horns are those of a 

 male, and are 33 inches in length; the longest female horns 

 being 32 inches. The basal circumference of the male horns 

 is 7 inches as against 5>^ inches for the female. The long- 

 est male skull, however, is exactly equalled by the longest 

 female skull, the dimension being ik,}^ inches. The max- 

 imum horn length given by Ward for an East African beisa is 

 38 inches. Both the true beisa and the fringed-eared have 

 smaller horns than the present race. 



The specimens examined by the writers have all come 

 from the Northern Guaso Nyiro drainage, ranging from 

 the headwaters on the Laikipia Plateau as far down as 

 the Lakiundu junction, and thence northward to Mount 

 Marsabit. Northward annectens no doubt merges into 

 gallorum at the north end of Lake Rudolf, but southward it 



