26o 



The Living Animals of the World 



districts of British East Africa. It frequents thick scrubby jungle, and is said to be exceedingly 

 watchful and wary. It lives either in pairs or in small families, but never congregates in large 

 herds. Like all the tragelaphine antelopes, this species is a leaf-eater, and feeds principally 

 during the night, lying up in thick bush during the heat of the day. 



There remains to be mentioned but one other group of antelopes, the ELANDS, large, 

 heavily built animals, which belong to the present group, but differ from all species of kudu, 

 sitatunga, and bushbuck, inasmuch as both sexes are horned. There are two forms of the 

 COMMON ELAND namely, the grey variety of South-western Africa, and the striped animal, which 

 is found in the countries farther north and east. The two forms grade one into the other, 

 and are absolutely identical in their habits and mode of life, the differences between them 

 being merely superficial. To the south of the twenty-third parallel of south latitude all elands 

 are of a uniform fawn colour, except the old animals, which look dark grey, from the fact that 



the scantiness of their coats allows the 

 dark colour of the skin to show through 

 the hair. Old males, when standing in 

 the shade of a tree, appear to be of a 

 deep blue-grey in colour, and are known 

 to the colonists of South Africa as " blue 

 bulls." In Ehodesia, South-east Africa, 

 and the countries to the north of the 

 Zambesi, all the elands are bright 

 chestnut-red when young, with a black 

 line down the centre of the back from 

 the withers to the tail, broad black 

 patches on the backs of the fore legs above 

 the knees, and eight or nine white stripes 

 on each side. When they grow old, the 

 ruddiness of the ground-colour gradually 

 fades, the black markings on the fore legs 

 die out, and the white stripes become 

 indistinguishable at a short distance, the 

 old bulls looking deep blue-grey in 

 general colour. Every intermediate stage 

 of colouring between the unstriped and 

 the highly coloured forms of eland is to 

 be found in the district lying between 

 the central portions of the Kalahari 

 Desert and the Zambesi Kiver. Old male 

 elands south of the Zambesi develop a 

 growth of long, bristly black hair on the 



forehead, which often hangs over their eyes and extends half-way down their noses. North of 

 the Zambesi this growth of hair is not nearly so luxuriant. 



I have carefully measured the standing height at the withers of many old male elands in 

 the interior of South Africa, and found that it varied from 5 feet 8 inches to 5 feet 10 inches. 

 The horns of bulls in their prime measure from 26 inches to 33 inches in length, but old 

 bulls wear their horns down very much. The cows carry longer, though thinner horns than 

 the bulls. 



The range of the eland once extended from Cape Agulhas to the White Nile, but it has 

 become extinct in many districts of Southern Africa, and in almost every other portion of its 

 range has, like all other tragelaphine antelopes, suffered so cruelly from the recent visitation 

 of rinderpest that it has now become a scarce animal all over Africa. 



During the rainy season elands are usually met with in small herds of from four or five 



Photo by J. W. McLellan] 



[Highbury. 



ELAND. 



A feature of the eland is the large " dewlap." Unlike the kudu, both sexes are 

 horned. 



