74 
Tue Hartebeest is one of the fleetest and 
The most characteristic of the 
alerts beents Ethiopian groups of ante- 
* lopes, and many a hunter has 
had his horse succumb in the attempt to 
run down a hartebeest, which on account of 
its swiftness and staying power is one of the 
most difficult of the big game to capture, for 
even when severely wounded their vitality is 
so great they frequently escape ; this is more 
remarkable from the fact that the animal is 
somewhat ungainly. The peculiar curved 
form of the horns is typical of the Bubaline 
antelopes. Africa is the great nursery of 
the antelopes, where they occupy the 
place which the deer tribes fill in other 
countries. Why the southern and central 
regions of Africa are destitute of deer has 
Animal Life 
THE Great Aviary has just had a most 
beautifying addition of six 
highly-coloured Flamingoes. 
I was fortunate enough to 
photograph them the day they arrived, when 
they were temporarily put into one of the 
cages of the Hastern Aviary. They soon 
took to food, and are certainly in very fine 
condition. Until Swainson poimted out that 
these birds had the webbed toes of the duck 
and a bill which was a modification of the 
duck’s, these birds had been for a long time 
classed with the waders. They are now 
classed with the swimming birds. These 
specimens are between five and six feet high. 
Bs 
THESE seven birds were photographed in 
the Great Aviary, and very closely resemble 
Ruddy 
Flamingo. 
RUDDY FLAMINGOES. 
not, and I am afraid never will be, explained 
satisfactorily. 
TS 
Tur White-tailed Gnu (the calf was born in 
The the menagerie) 1s a very re- 
White-tailed markable animal, possessing an 
Gnu: extraordinary sense of smell. 
The peculiar curved horns (which are 
common to both sexes), and the great 
width of its naked muzzle, from which 
long white bristles protrude, give this 
antelope a very peculiar and fierce appear- 
ance. The mother and child shown were 
so nervous at bemg photographed that many 
people would have lost all patience before 
getting any satisfactory result. It will be 
noticed that the horns in the calf are quite 
straight; the curvature outwards and the 
bend upwards are only developed with age. 
EUROPEAN FLAMINGOES. 
the ruddy, except in colour, which is 
mainly white with some 
European : f Aisne Tas, 
Elamincoes: salmon-coloured wing coverts. 
What a wonderful sight it 
must be to see flamingoes in flocks of tens 
of thousands. Mr. Hulme, who saw them in 
these numbers on the lake of Sind, describes 
them as massed upon the water like large 
rosy islands or hovering above the lake like 
a cloud at sunset. But one of the most 
wonderful sights in the world must be “to see 
one of these enormous flocks rise suddenly 
when alarmed. As you approach them, so long 
as they remain on the water at rest, they look 
simply like a map of faintly rosy snow. A 
rifle is fired, then the exposure of the upper 
and under coverts of the wing turns the mass 
into a gigantic, brilliantly rosy scarf, waving 
to and fro in mighty folds as it floats away.” 
