376 AFRICAN GAME ANIMALS 



over most of the continent of Africa, outside of the moun- 

 tains, the heavy forest, and the true desert. In individual 

 abundance they unquestionably surpass any other of the 

 genera of big game with the doubtful exception of the 

 gazelles, if these can be called big game; their range is 

 greater and they are more plentiful within it. Taken as a 

 whole, in the parts of Africa we traversed, hartebeests were 

 at least three or four times as numerous as any other horned 

 animal. We saw no zebra in Uganda or along the Nile; 

 in East Africa they were more abundant than any of the 

 buck except the hartebeests, but the latter outnumbered 

 them about three to one. There were no hartebeests on 

 the Northern Guaso Nyiro, where we found both kinds of 

 zebra, their ranges here overlapping. Why the hartebeests 

 were not found in this region we cannot guess. It is an 

 illustration of the queer and seemingly causeless and ca- 

 pricious discontinuous distribution of so many African game 

 animals. The ordinary zebra, the bonte-quagga, in its 

 various color forms is almost always found in company with 

 one or another kind of hartebeest; the hartebeests extend 

 over vast areas to which zebras do not penetrate; but at 

 this point the zebra flourishes where the hartebeests are not 

 found. In like fashion the big Grevy zebra is found at 

 different points of its range — north, south, and west — in 

 company with various forms of hartebeests, but they are 

 wanting in other places. In East Africa the small gazelle, 

 the Thomson, so abundant farther south, also fails to reach 

 the Northern Guaso Nyiro ; yet a form of its big congener, the 

 Grant gazelle, elsewhere found in company with it, is com- 

 mon along that river. The distribution of the small gazelle is 

 limited to the highlands and it does not occur below an alti- 



