BLESBOK 



BLESBOK (Damaliscus albifrons). 

 Nunni of the Bechuanas. 



Closely allied to the last (of which it may be only a local race), but 

 with less black on the body and limbs, the blaze divided by a white 

 line between the eyes, and the rings on the horns yellowish. 



Formerly to be numbered by hundreds of thousands, the beautiful 

 blesbok has in the last thirty years grown very scarce indeed, being 

 only met with in small numbers on a few Boer farms in the Transvaal 

 and the Orange River Colony. Fifty years ago blesboks often 

 literally darkened the face of the land with their innumerable legions. 

 The north of the Cape Colony, Griqualand West, the Orange River 

 Colony, and the plains of the Western and Southern Transvaal were 

 the true home of this beautiful antelope. Gordon Cumming wrote 

 of a sight he beheld in the blesbok country in 1848. "The plains," 

 he says, " exhibited one purple mass of graceful blesboks, which extended 

 without a break as far as my eyes could strain ; the depth of their 

 vast legions covered a breadth of about six hundred yards." 

 Distribution. Northern plains of Cape Colony, Orange River Colony, 

 Transvaal, and Bechuanaland ; now nearly exterminated. 



Circun, Tip to 

 ference. Tip. 



51 



-18 

 -18 



171 



-i7l 

 7l 



-17 

 17 

 17 



Locality. 



South Africa . 

 Orange River Colony 



64 8J Transvaal 



6| 7 Do. 



6J io& Orange River Colony 



71 64 ? 

 84 ? 



6| 7 ? 



7 10 ? 



7 74 Orange River Colony 



6| 7 ? 



64 9 Orange River Colony 



6| 94 Orange River Colony 



Owner. 



Sir Edmund G. Loder, Bart. 



F. R. N. Findlay. 



J. Rosen. 



J. B. Wheelwright. 



Abe Bailey. 



Capt. W. Jardine. 



B. J. Fitzherbert. 



Major W. Anstruther Thomson. 



F. V. Worthington. 



J. L. Drege. 



Count E. Hoyos. 



T. Stephenson. 



Lieut. -Col. W. H. Sitwell. 



Julius Jeppe. 



