138 ANIMAL LIFE IN AFRICA 



and the valuable qualities of the hides of both sexes 

 would otherwise inevitably have called down upon the 

 species. The rinderpest, however, smote him with 

 terrible force ; in common with other members of the 

 sub-family he was wellnigh exterminated in certain 

 districts. Even to this day, and in areas where game 

 is carefully preserved, the species has not yet recovered 

 from the effects of the blow, despite its natural fertility. 



At present the kudu exists in various isolated parts of 

 the Cape Colony, in Rhodesia both south and north of 

 the Zambezi, in Bechuanaland, German South-West 

 Africa, the northern and eastern Transvaal, Zululand, 

 and Portuguese Africa. Farther north it extends through 

 Nyasaland, German and British East Africa to Somaliland 

 and Abyssinia. Kudus are seldom encountered in the 

 open, nor as a general rule do they stray far from water ; 

 above all they love stony and rather broken ground, 

 covered with thorn scrub, where it is extremely difficult 

 to approach them unobserved, even with the wind 

 blowing favourably. They are sociable, but the troops 

 are seldom large. 



The kudu is, more than most antelopes, a browser, 

 subsisting chiefly on the leaves of the thorn acacias and 

 bush shrubs, together with the fruits of the marula and 

 other trees. He utters a bark not unlike, but louder 

 than, that of the bushbuck, and the males, when fighting 

 and at other times, often grunt loudly. He is an in- 

 offensive creature, and though, when driven to bay by 

 dogs, a bull will often make some attempt to fend them 

 off with lowered horns, he can never be considered really 

 dangerous, and I have seldom known cases of one male 

 killing another in combat. Their method of progression 

 when alarmed resembles that of the inyala and the 

 common bushbuck ; that is to say the animal goes under 



