BONTEBOK 123 



bonteboks and the blesboks, which caused Cornwallis Harris to believe 

 that both occurred north of the Orange river. 



" One reason why I consider it impossible that bonteboks and 

 blesboks could have co-existed in the same district is because the 

 two are so closely allied that they w^ould inevitably have interbred and 

 become fused into a species more or less intermediate between the two. 

 There is not more difference between the bontebok and the blesbok 

 than between the whole-coloured eland of south-western Africa and 

 the striped form of the same species found all over south-east Africa ; 

 while the difference between the two former animals is less than that 

 between the variegated form of bushbuck found on the Chobi river 

 and the dark race of the same species inhabiting the coast-region of 

 Cape Colony. The difference is that in the case of the eland and the 

 bushbuck the extremes are connected by a series of links, which can 

 only be looked upon as local variations from the type form. If all 

 the varieties of the bushbuck which exist in south-east Africa, and 

 connect step by step the dark brown and almost spotless form found 

 in the Cape Colony with the variegated race met with on the banks of 

 the Chobi, had been exterminated before the advent of Europeans, 

 leaving only the two widely different forms, there can be little doubt 

 that the bushbuck of the Chobi and that of Cape Colony would have 

 been considered distinct species. In the case of the blesbok and the 

 bontebok the connecting links have been lost. It is not improbable, 

 I think, that the blesbok once ranged right through Cape Colony to 

 the coast at Cape Agulhas, but that the gradual desiccation of the 

 Karoo in the south-western portions of the Colony — of which there 

 is a good deal of evidence — or several years of continuous drought, 

 caused the withdrawal of the species from the parched and waterless 

 Karoo. Those which had reached the plains near Cape Agulhas, 

 where there is plenty of water, would, however, have had no reason to 

 move, and thus a portion of the race may have become isolated, and 

 in course of time differentiated from the original stock. 



" In general appearance bontebok and blesbok bear the closest 

 resemblance to one another, being, as Harris long ago remarked, 

 ' equally robust, hunch-backed and broad-nosed, and rejoicing in the 

 same whimsical and fine venerable old-goatish expression of counte- 

 nance.' The bontebok is, however, slightly larger and heavier than 

 the blesbok : the male specimen of the former now in the galleries of 

 the British Museum, a fine full-grown animal in good condition, 

 weighed exactly 200 lb. as it lay, while the male specimen of the 

 latter — also a fine animal of its kind — weighed 180 lb. as it lay and 



