WILDEBEEST AND HARTEBEEST 377 



tude of three thousand feet, but the Grant gazelle occurs 

 much lower and occupies the low desert tracts. Altitude is 

 apparently the cause which prevents them from occupying 

 the Uasin Gishu Plateau lying at a height of seven to nine 

 thousand feet, which is above the ranges of both gazelles. 

 The topi is abundant in certain tracts and entirely absent 

 from big intervening tracts seemingly in no way different. 

 Such discontinuous distribution reaches its height in the 

 case of the square-mouthed rhinoceros. 



The hartebeest is never found in the dense tropical for- 

 ests, whether of mountain or lowland. By preference it 

 haunts the treeless, or well-nigh treeless, open plains; but ac- 

 cording to our experience it also goes, rather more freely 

 than the zebra, into the sparse open woods of small, scantily 

 leaved thorn-trees; and both in Uganda and along the 

 'Nzoia we now and then found it in fairly thick vegetation, 

 among trees, bushes, and tall grass. It cannot too often 

 be said, however, that in these matters equally trustworthy 

 observers disagree, chiefly because animals of the same 

 species differ widely in their habits under different conditions 

 of time and place. Captain Stigand, for instance, says of 

 these East and Middle African hartebeests that they "prac- 

 tically are never seen in bush or in shade; they seem even 

 to mistrust the proximity of bush." As a general proposi- 

 tion this is unquestionably true, for the hartebeest, like the 

 wildebeest, topi, zebra, and gazelle, is pre-eminently an 

 animal of the bare, open plain; but according to our experi- 

 ence Captain Stigand's statement is far too broad. We 

 have frequently come on hartebeests among thorn-trees or 

 in shade, and sometimes in country where it was impossible 

 for them to avoid the neighborhood of thick bush. It is 



