160 SAVAGE SUDAN 



and in the Sudan are, within my experience, honestly and 

 honourably fulfilled by visiting sportsmen. But there 

 are exceptions. What wealth of detail amusing or 

 lamentable must have accumulated, locked away in 

 the breasts of Colonial Governors and Game-Super- 

 intendents! the excuses, specious or otherwise, the 

 . . . ? Any offender, whether wittingly or unwittingly, 

 may rest assured that he will need to be some points 

 better than a super- Ananias, if he rely for escape 

 upon anything beyond the simple naked truth. 



A NOTE ON NOMENCLATURE 



WITH SPECIAL REFERENCE TO THE NILE LECHWI 

 (ONOTRAGUS MEGACEROS) 



That an animal so distinct and so highly specialised as the 

 Nile lechwi should for half a century have figured under a 

 false name or, in Roosevelt's phrase, been "cursed with the 

 silly misnomer of ' Mrs Gray's waterbuck ' (Cobus marid) " 

 casts a sinister sidelight on the system of zoological nomen- 

 clature. To begin with, in my view, such a name is bad equally 

 in fact and in grammar, since by grammatic axiom (though 

 not otherwise) " the male is more worthy." 



Since most laymen naturally conclude that some " Mrs Gray " 

 must have had a hand in the discovery of this antelope, a 

 short review of the facts becomes appropriate. 



The existence of this Sudan marsh- buck was first made 

 known to science by an Austrian explorer, von Heuglin, who 

 in 1855 brought to Vienna seven complete specimens, including 

 one living female. Having named his discovery Adenota 

 megaceros (a definition which, although wrong, was not so 

 very far wrong after all), von Heuglin, neglecting the red- 

 tape of scientific formulae, hurried back to Africa. Four years 

 later, in 1859, our great British Consul at Khartoum, John 

 Petherick, sent home a couple of lechwi skulls with masks. 

 From these paltry fragments the then Curator of the British 

 Museum (Dr Gray), ignoring the prior discovery by von 

 Heuglin, hastily and unwarrantably jumped to totally false 



