224 ANTELOPES 



the western side of the continent from the Cape to Angola, and on the 

 east extending through Mozambique and south Nyasaland to about 

 8 2 5' N. latitude in the Bahr-el-Ghazal province of the Sudan. 



The fact that the species ranges so far north as the Bahr-el-Ghazal 

 is demonstrated by the heads of two bucks killed in that province by 

 Captain P. E. Vaughan, one of which is exhibited in the British 

 Museum (Natural History). The animals to which these heads belonged 

 were killed in latitude 8 25' N. That this Bahr-el-Ghazal reedbuck 

 is specifically identical with the South African animal will be at once 

 apparent by an inspection of the heads of the two placed one above the 

 other in the Natural History Museum. Indeed, the only noticeable 

 differences between the two are the somewhat lighter colour and slighter 

 build and horns of the northern animal. In the latter respects the 

 Bahr-el-Ghazal head confirms Mr. Vaughan Kirby's opinion with regard 

 to the South Nyasa reedbuck, which he describes as smaller and 

 lighter in build than the Cape animal. Such insignificant differences 

 are, however, too slight as a foundation for racial distinction. This 

 northern range of the reedbuck brings its distributional area within 

 (for Africa) a comparatively short distance of that of the addax, a 

 species which Captain Vaughan has killed in Nubia as far south as 

 latitude 17 15' N. And we thus have what have generally been 

 regarded as essentially a northern and a southern type coming within 

 ten degrees of latitude of one another. This and other facts lead 

 to the belief that such North African animals as the addax, the 

 white oryx, and the bubal hartebeest are essentially wanderers from 

 Ethiopian Africa, which have become specially adapted for a desert 

 existence, and have, therefore, been enabled to travel northwards. 



Despite the apparent close similarity of the Bahr-el-Ghazal to the 

 Cape form of the species, the reedbuck of northern Rhodesia has 

 been separated by the Hon. Walter Rothschild (Proc. Zool. Soc. 1907, 

 p. 237) as Cervicapra arundinum occidentals, on account of the paler 

 and more greyish rufous head and neck, and the pale rusty grey of 

 the limbs, tail, and body. 



This grey tendency becomes still more pronounced in certain reed- 

 buck obtained on the Songwi river, a few miles from its entrance into 

 Lake Nyasa, which, with the exception of the normal black markings 

 on the limbs, are wholly of a bright bluish French grey. On page 429 

 of the Zoological Society's Proceedings for 1900, Dr. P. L. Sclater 

 described these Nyasa grey reedbuck (of which some eight specimens 

 had then been seen or heard of) as a new species, with the name of 

 C. thomasina. They are, however, at most, only a local race, and not 



