BLAAUIVBOK 301 



at a walk and loiter so little that, given even a few minutes' start, it 

 may take hours for a hunter on foot to come up with them. Their 

 progress is, however, rarely straight ahead, their line being either 

 circuitous or zigzag ; and the best plan of hunting seems, after coming 

 across tracks made within the hour, to make a cast in the most likely 

 direction, although only bush-experience can ensure success in making 

 such casts." 



Of the Sudan race Major Powell-Cotton writes that " they seemed 

 to prefer a more bushy country than the tora. I also found them on 

 much higher ground than the latter, having shot two while looking 

 for kudu on the hills. A wounded one ripped a man's arm badly while 

 he was trying to cut its throat. The skin is very thick and tough. 

 Tora are often found in company with them, when they are much 

 harder to approach. The largest herd seen numbered twenty-five." 



THE BLAAUWBOK 



{Hippotragus leucopJi&us} 



In a work on the modern big game of Africa very few lines will 

 suffice for the southern representative of the present group the 

 blaauwbok, or blue antelope, a species which has been extinct for 

 over a century, and of which but few remains are preserved in museums. 

 The species, which was confined to the southern districts of Cape 

 Colony, appears to have been always scarce and local, one of its final 

 refuges being the mountains between Swcllendam and Algoa Bay, 

 where the last specimens were shot in 1 800. Its colour was bluish 

 grey, with pure white under- parts. Mr. Graham Renshaw in an 

 interesting account of what is known of the species, published in his 

 Natural History Essays (1904), states that sixteen specimens arc 

 known to have been preserved, but only a few of these appear to be 

 still extant. One skin is now in the Museum at Vienna, a second in 

 Stockholm, a third in Upsala, a fourth in Paris, and a fifth in Lcyclcn. 

 The British (Natural History) Museum also possesses a couple of 

 frontlets with horns believed to belong to the blaauwbok. 



In the Report of the Albany Museum for the year 1901 reference 

 is made to the identification among the collection of a pair of horns of 

 the blaauwbok. The horns were entered in one of the old catalogues 

 as belonging to the animal in question ; assuming the identification to 

 be correct, the specimen appears to be the only known relic of the 



