350 AFRICAN GAME TRAILS 



type which we got on the Sotik. They seemed to me some- 

 what less in size than the big gazelle of the Kapiti Plains. 

 One of the bucks I shot, an adult of average size (I was 

 not able to weigh my biggest one), weighed one hundred and 

 fifteen pounds; a very big true Grant's buck which I shot 

 on the Kapiti Plains weighed one hundred and seventy-one 

 pounds; doubtless there is complete intergradation, but 

 the Guaso Nyero form seemed slimmer and lighter, and 

 in some respects seemed to tend toward the Somaliland 

 gazelles. I marked no difference in the habits, except that 

 these northern gazelle switched their tails more jerkily, 

 more like tommies, than was customary with the true 

 Grant's gazelles. But the difference may have been in 

 my observation. At any rate, the gazelles in this neighbor- 

 hood, like those elsewhere, went in small parties, or herds 

 of thirty or forty individuals, on the open plains or where 

 there were a few scattered bushes, and behaved like those 

 in the Sotik or on the Athi Plains. A near kinsman of 

 the gazelle, the gerenuk, a curious creature with a very 

 long neck, which the Swahilis call "little giraffe," was 

 scattered singly or in small parties through the brush, and 

 was as wild and wary as the common gazelle was tame. 

 It seemed to prefer browsing, while the common gazelle 

 grazes. 



The handsome oryx, with their long horns carried by 

 both sexes, and their coloring of black, white, and dun 

 gray, came next to the gazelle in point of numbers. They 

 were generally found in herds of from half a dozen to fifty 

 individuals, often mixed with zebra herds. There were also 

 solitary bulls, probably turned out of the herds by more 

 vigorous rivals, and often one of these would be found with 

 a herd of zebras, more merciful to it than its own kinsfolk. 

 All this game of the plains is highly gregarious in habit, 

 and the species associate freely with one another. The 

 oryx cows were now generally accompanied by very young 

 calves, for, unlike what we found to be the case with the 

 hartebeest on the Athi, the oryx on the Guaso Nyero seem 



