THE sELOtlS COLLECTION. 73 



be found, though they are usually very scarce In all the 



country between the Botletlie and Chobe rivers, Elands are still 

 to be found in greater or lesser numbers, and I have often seen 

 herds of over a hundred together. In the dry desert country 



through which the Chobe runs they are particularly plentiful 



Between the Chobe and Zambesi rivers I found Elands plentiful, and 

 so far as I went to the north of the Zambesi I also found them. . . " 



The characters that have been used to distinguish the various 

 races or so-called races of South African Eland are very unsatis- 

 factory, and it seems highly probable that in this area only two 

 forms can be recognized (1) the extinct Cape Eland, the typical 

 race ; and (2) the Zambesi or Mashonaland race. If such be the 

 case the present form would have to be called livingstonei, a name 

 bestowed by Sclater on the Zambesi Eland in 1864*, and the names 

 selousi, niediecki, and Icaufmanni would become synonymous. 

 The absence of the white suborbital marking and extreme develop- 

 ment of the dark frontal tuft are signs of old age ; the shape and 

 extent of these white suborbital markings and frontal tufts are 

 obviously characters associated with sex and age, and cannot be 

 used for systematic diagnosis. The same is true of the almost 

 complete disappearance of some of the white body-stripes, which 

 in old age appear to get very indistinct, although never entirely 

 absent as they are in both the young and adult of the typical race 

 from the Cape. 



In this connection it is of interest to see what Selous' view 

 was in 1881 when he wrote the paper for the Zoological Society 

 quoted above. 



" The skins of Elands that I have seen from the Kalahari desert 

 have no signs of a stripe upon them, and the dark mark above the 

 knee on the inside of the fore leg is either very faint or altogether 

 wanting. In April 1879 I shot several Eland cows about sixty 

 miles north of Bamangwato, on the road to Lake Ngami. I 

 looked at all of them very carefully, but could not detect the 

 faintest sign of a stripe, though some of them had the patches on 

 the inside of the fore legs of a light gray colour. During the 



* Oreas livingstonii, Sclater, Proc. Zool. Soc. 1864, p. 105. 



Taurotragus oryx livingstonei, Selous, Great and Small Game of Africa, 

 p. 421, 1899. 



