130 SAVAGE SUDAN 



is practically impossible to reproduce this effect. 1 

 'Shoulder-height 48 inches; horns 282 inches in length, 

 with a spread of 24 inches between tips. The animal 

 would scale about 500 lb., and we left our savage friends 

 revelling in a barbaric feast. Several, nevertheless, 

 courteously escorted us back to our ship. 



This rufous phase of the waterbuck is quite exceptional 

 in the Sudan. Subsequently, in the Nuer country, further 

 up White Nile, I shot a second example a "lone bull" 

 accompanying a troop of cob and recognised the variety 

 on one other occasion that is, thrice in all amidst the 

 many hundreds of dark-brown or iron-grey waterbucks 

 met with ; nor do the two colour-phases intermingle. 

 These few rufous examples are merely colour-varieties 

 a sort of erythrism of the common iron-grey waterbuck 

 of northern Africa (Cobus def asset). They have been 

 recorded from Abyssinia and southern Somaliland, and 

 I have seen three shot on the upper Dinder River. 



If it be permissible to hazard an impression, I would 

 suggest that these rufous waterbucks may originate in 

 West Africa in Senegal, the Gambia, etc. whence 

 they spread across the continent in a thin horizontal 

 line, west to east, bisecting the north-and-south range 

 of the ordinary iron-grey waterbucks in the basin of 

 Upper White Nile, where I met with them as above. 



On returning home I offered one of my tawny water- 

 bucks to the British Museum, and subsequently the late 

 Mr R. Lydekker wrote me : " Your specimens strengthen 

 my idea that most of these so-called races are nothing 

 more than individual herds." Would that systematists 

 and scientific nomenclators would consistently and con- 



1 No sort of blame is implied or imputed to our taxidermists. Human 

 skill is incapable of restoring that careless grace which long loose layers of 

 shaggy hair naturally assume in life ; that is, when once the thick hide 

 upon which they grew has been dried hard as a board. This remark 

 applies to all the rough-haired antelopes in Sudan, for example, to the 

 roan with its arched and immensely, bushy neck ; also to the goat-like 

 beard and neck-ruff of the saddle-backed lechwi (Onotragus megaceros). 



