ANTELOPES 145 



In cloudy weather, especially in spring, when the grass 

 is young and fresh, it may occasionally be observed quite 

 late in the day feeding close to one of its refuges, moving 

 slowly about, and frequently lying down. It never 

 wanders freely about by day, however, like the steenbuck, 

 and indeed appears different in nearly all its habits and 

 in its character from that animal. Sometimes it springs 

 up when thirty or forty yards away, but at other times 

 almost from under your feet, in each case making off with- 

 out delay at a scuttling run, which nevertheless takes it 

 over the ground at so good a rate that it requires an 

 uncommonly fast dog to catch a full-grown buck. Having 

 gone thus at best pace for a considerable distance, it 

 squats again suddenly where it finds suitable covert. 



This animal never bounds like a steenbuck or a duiker. 

 Indeed, if, as sometimes happens, a Sharpe's steenbuck 

 and a true steenbuck are put up from the same piece of 

 long grass, the difference in their habits cannot escape 

 notice. The true steenbuck makes at once for the open 

 plain, taking great bounds every few strides, its head 

 carried high, and looking the picture of grace. When it 

 has gone several hundred yards it probably pauses and 

 scrutinizes you from behind the shelter of a bush or tuft 

 of grass, for a moment or two, before again making off. 

 The Sharpe steenbuck, on the other hand, its head carried 

 low, scuttles straight for the rocks or the nearest big 

 clump of bush, in which it disappears. It never, in my 

 experience, makes the slightest pause, until it suddenly 

 squats down in its shelter. (The steenbuck, when it 

 thinks itself safe from pursuit, generally walks along 

 quietly for a time, before lying down or resuming grazing.) 



Sharpe's steenbuck is very solitary in habit, and even 

 when a pair are put out of the same patch of bush, they 

 seem generally to have been lying in different parts of it. 



