154 SAVAGE SUDAN 



secret!) points to this marsh-buck being quite plentiful 

 locally ; and with that, my own experience tallies. Whether 

 one may happen in a season to see many or few is largely 

 a matter of luck. 



Already I have devoted what (I gravely fear) may 

 appear quite tiresome space to the mere zoology of a 

 single animal. My excuse and apology is that the 

 generic status of the Nile lechwi has never before been 

 correctly aligned in any British work. Should, however, 

 my feeble statement of the case (see Appendix, infra] be 

 held to fall short of proof, then let me refer to an exact 



analogue in South 

 Africa. There, on the 

 Zambesi, are also found 

 living alongside each 

 other and in precisely 

 parallel circumstance, 

 a lechwi ( Onotragiis 

 lechee] and also a cob 

 (Adenota vardoni\ just 

 as we find their counter- 

 parts here on the White 



Nile. But while, in either habitat, the two forms are 

 constantly found within half a mile of each other, yet never 

 do they come in contact. The swamp-loving lechwi grazes 

 girth-deep ; the other as invariably avoids wetting its feet ! * 

 The saddleback I have entitled a First Prize of Sudan ; 

 nevertheless I had excluded its capture from my personal 

 programme and ambitions therein. There comes a period 

 in life when it behoves to economise physical powers, or 

 at least to avoid squandering them on doubtful emprise ; 

 and the terror of those Nilotic swamps prevailed. I struck 

 the coveted saddleback off my schedule. But dis aliter 

 visum. 



1 See SELOUS' notes on these two Zambesi antelopes, both in his own 

 work A Hunter's Wanderings, and also in .his contribution to Rowland 

 Ward's Great and Small Game of Africa, particularly at pp. 300-1, 



