WILDEBEEST AND HARTEBEEST 369 



Key to the Races of alhojubatus 



Legs lighter, drab or tawny-olive; horns more horizontal in direction, not 

 curved down below level of orbit; body size larger 



albojuhatus 



Legs darker, olive-brown or sepia; horns curved downward well below 

 level of orbit; body size smaller mearnsi 



Athi White-Bearded Wildebeest 

 Gorgon albojuhatus albojubatus 



Native Name: Swahili, nyumbu. 



Connochcetes taurinus albojubatus Thomas, 1892, Ann. & Mag. Nat. Hist. 

 (6), IX, p. 388. 



Range. — From the Athi Plains and south bank of the 

 Tana River near the Ithanga Hills, in British East Africa 

 southward throughout the highlands of the coast drainage 

 to Kilimanjaro, and thence through the Rift Valley to cen- 

 tral German East Africa. 



A head of the white-bearded wildebeest shot by Jackson 

 on the Athi Plains furnished Thomas, in 1892, with the mate- 

 rial for his original description of this race. Notwithstand- 

 ing that the white throat mane of this form is a really con- 

 spicuous difference from the black mane of the brindled 

 wildebeest, it was for many years supposed to be indis- 

 tinguishable from that species. Speke and Grant, in 1863, 

 met with it on the Kigani River, opposite Zanzibar Island, 

 and brought back with them two heads which were assigned 

 by Sclater to the brindled widebeest. Later Fischer, Hilde- 

 brandt, Abbott, Jackson, Willoughby, and many others 

 shot specimens in the vicinity of Kilimanjaro under the 

 supposition that they were true brindled wildebeest. In 

 1905 Neumann described, from a specimen now living in the 

 Berlin Zoological Garden which came from the southern 

 slope of Kilimanjaro, another race which he named hecki. 

 This he distinguishes from the white-bearded by the Hght 

 grayish-brown forehead and lighter body color. Such color 

 differences, however, are peculiar to the female sex and to 

 immature animals and are of no racial significance. Sports- 

 men have thought that they detected two quite different 



