MRS. GRAY'S KOB 205 



where they can remain for the morning or even the whole day. Fresh 

 tracks must be followed carefully and cautiously ; and very silently 

 must the hunter move, or he may easily give himself away, and never 

 see the beasts he is tracking. Sing-sing are, indeed, difficult to discern, 

 even when full in view ; and until well used to the bush and the 

 game, it may easily happen that the hunter may be well within sight 

 and shot and yet not see his quarry. The flesh of the sing-sing is 

 coarse and unpalatable, being almost uneatable by Europeans, although 

 natives will eat it without reluctance." 



MRS. GRAY'S KOB 

 (Cobus maria) 



Til, NUER 

 (PLATE vii, fig. 3) 



Although commonly classed with the typical waterbucks, Mrs. 

 Gray's kob (so named after the wife of Dr. J. E. Gray, sometime keeper 

 of the zoological department of the British Museum) seems more nearly 

 related to the next species, and thus renders inadvisable the generic 

 separation of the kobs from the waterbucks. This strikingly hand- 

 some species is readily distinguished by the long, slender, doubly 

 curved horns, ridged nearly to their tips, and the blackish- brown 

 body-colour of the old bucks ; this sable livery being relieved by a 

 whitish patch in front of the withers, the yellowish -white ears, a 

 yellowish streak behind, above, and in front of each eye, and the 

 yellowish muzzle, chin, and patch on the lower part of the throat. 

 The limbs and much of the under-parts are wholly dark in the adult 

 bucks, which attain a shoulder-height of about 38 inches. Immature 

 bucks and females at all ages are chestnut- red. The maximum 

 known horn-length is 32^- inches. 



The haunts of this kob are the papyrus-swamps of the White Nile, 

 Bahr-el-Ghazal, Sobat, and other rivers of the southern Sudan. These 

 antelopes are found in large herds, although we have but few particulars 

 of their mode of life, which is, however, doubtless similar to that of the 

 white-eared kob. The gradual development of the dark livery of the 

 old buck likewise, in all probability, takes place in the same manner 

 in both species. 



