124 



ANTELOPES 



135 Ib. clean. Two other bontebok rams apparently full-grown 

 shot at the same time as the above-mentioned specimen, weighed 

 respectively 166 Ib. and 160 Ib. as they fell. From these data I 

 infer that though an exceptionally fine blesbok will weigh more than 

 an ordinary bontebok, yet the heaviest bonteboks will outweigh the 

 heaviest blesboks. The horns in both species attain a length of about 

 1 6 inches in males ; those of females, though nearly as long, are much 

 slighter. 



" The bontebok, having always been confined to a small area of 

 country, would probably have been exterminated early in the last 

 century had it not been protected by the Cape Government. Sir 

 Cornwallis Harris states that at the time of his visit to South Africa 

 in 1836-37 a fine of 500 rix-dollars (37 : IDS.) was attached to the 

 destruction of one of these animals without a special license from 

 Government. In spite of stringent laws there can, however, be no 

 doubt that many bonteboks were annually killed, and, had it not been 

 for Mr. Alexander Vander Byl, this fine antelope would probably have 

 vanished long ago from the face of the earth. In 1864 this gentle- 

 man, when enclosing with a wire-fence his domain, known as Nacht- 

 wacht Farm, near Bredasdorp, conceived the idea of driving all the 

 bontebok on the neighbouring plain within the enclosure. Circum- 

 stances favoured him, and he was able, b'y a piece of good fortune, to 

 drive the greater number of the bonteboks still alive into the enclosure. 

 He put the number thus secured at something like 300, and his 

 nephews believed in 1898 that there had been little increase or 

 decrease in their number since that date. I may not have seen all, 

 but it certainly did not appear to me that there was anything like 

 300 bonteboks on the enclosed ground at the date of my visits in 

 1895 and 1896. Mr. Vander Byl's example was followed by one 

 of his neighbours, Dr. Albertyn, who at that time also had a small 

 herd of bontebok on his farm. Besides these carefully protected herds, 

 there were a few surviving on the plains outside the enclosed farms, 

 both in the neighbourhood of Bredasdorp and near Swellendam. 



" In habits the bontebok is precisely similar to the blesbok. The 

 calves are dropped in September and October, and, as with most other 

 African antelopes, gain strength so rapidly that when a week old they 

 cannot be run down by an ordinary shooting-horse. Bontebok no doubt 

 once congregated in vast droves. Those on the enclosed farms near 

 Cape Agulhas associated in small herds of from half-a-dozen to twenty 

 or thirty individuals. Though not very wild, they would not allow 

 any one to approach on foot within 300 yards, though they would 



