112 ANTELOPES 



1885 a small herd of six suddenly appeared in northern Mashonaland, 

 near the Hanyani river, some 20 miles to the north-west of where 

 Salisbury now stands. This is the more remarkable, since the natives 

 of that part of Mashonaland are unacquainted with this hartebeest, for 

 which they have no name in their own language. This proves, I think, 

 that it could never have been indigenous to that part of the country. 



" Only one of these six stragglers was shot — a female, of which the 

 skull is now in the British Museum (Natural History) — and the rest 

 must have made their way back to the country whence they came 

 — probably the neighbourhood of the Sabi river. Throughout the 

 greater part of the country in which I have travelled to the north of 

 the Zambesi, I have met with Lichtenstein's hartebeest ; and it is one 

 of the commonest antelopes on the table -lands lying between the 

 Zambesi and the Kafukwi, as well as all over the country to the north 

 of the latter river, which is where I first met with it in 1877-78. 



" At that time very little was known concerning this hartebeest, 

 and, with the exception of the two type specimens at Berlin brought 

 by Peters from the lower Zambesi, it was unrepresented even by 

 so much as a skull in any European collection. There are now, 

 however, in the Natural History Museum, two mounted specimens 

 — male and female — as well as several skulls. The horns, though 

 similar in general characters to those of the Cape hartebeest, are much 

 shorter, and instead of being rounded at the base are broad and flat. 

 The black mark down the front of the face of the Cape species is 

 entirely wanting in this hartebeest, in which the colour of the head and 

 face is uniform yellowish red, with the exception of a black patch on 

 the extremity of the under jaw. In the adult Lichtenstein's hartebeest 

 the shoulders, back, and upper part of the neck and sides are of a rich 

 dark chestnut-red colour ; the head, the sides of the neck, and the 

 lower part of the sides being much lighter. As in the Cape hartebeest, 

 there is a patch of pale yellow on the rump, and the insides of the 

 thighs and belly are also pale yellow. The upper part of the tail, 

 knees, and fronts of all four legs are black. An adult male shot in 

 the Manica country to the north of the confluence of the Zambesi and 

 Kafukwi rivers had a patch of dark grey, about 6 inches in diameter, 

 about a hand's breadth behind each shoulder ; and a female from the 

 same part of the country also showed similar grey patches, although 

 in two other full-grown males shot in the same locality they were 

 wanting. I have not observed them in any of the specimens sub- 

 sequently shot near the Sabi river or in the neighbourhood of the 

 Pungwi. 



