On the East-African Reedbuch. 303 



XXXVIII. — On the " Tohi" the East-African Reedbuch cur- 

 rently known as Cervicapra bolior. By Oldfield Thomas. 



Messrs. Rowland Ward have recently put into my hands 

 three Reedbuck skulls which, collected some twenty or 

 thirty years ago, had become scattered into different collec- 

 tions, but which, noticing their peculiarity, Messrs. Ward had 

 kept in touch with and have now brought together again in 

 order that I might examine and report upon them. 



They were obtained in some part of the Upper Nile, and, 

 according to one account, at Kassala. Their collector was a 

 Herr Essler, by whom a number of other large mammals 

 now in the British Museum were procured at the same time. 



Their northern locality has still more recently been con- 

 firmed by Dr. Donaldson Smith, who obtained several 

 specimens of the same form during his recent journey from 

 Lake Rudolf to the Nile, in about 5° N. latitude. 



Now these specimens all agree among themselves, and 

 differ from all the species recognized in the ' Book of Ante- 

 lopes/ by the peculiar graceful curvature of their horns, 

 which, while first sloping backwards and then outwards 

 somewhat as in C. arundinum, are distinctly (though not 

 abruptly) recurved forwards and inwards terminally. As a 

 result their back view is not altogether unlike the more 

 distant figure of C. arundinum in the ' Book of Antelopes,' 

 pi. xliii., though the tips approach each other terminally 

 much more, while their side view is similar both to those of 

 the East-African antelope currently known, since Dr. Giinther's 

 paper on the subject *, as C. bohor, and also to Riippell's 

 figure of " Antilope redunca " f, afterwards the type of his 

 C. bohor. 



The side view of the horn-curvature being therefore the 

 same, Dr. Giinther, in the absence of Abyssinian material, 

 not unnaturally assigned the East- African animal, the " Tohi " 

 of Mr. Jackson in ' Big Game Shooting,' to Riippell's 

 species; but it is now quite clear, both by locality and by 

 some details about the type kindly sent me by Dr. Kobelt, 

 that Messrs. Ward's specimens are the true Bohor, being the 

 first examples of it that have come to this country. By their 

 aid we see that it is a peculiar northern species, most nearly 

 allied to C. arundinum, to which it approximates in size, but is 

 distinguished by its terminally incurved and recurved horns. 



* P. Z. S. 1890, p. 604. 



t N. Wirb. Abyss, pi. vii. fig. 1 (1835). 



