Wild Beasts and Their Ways GA 
adult male sable antelope is absolutely black and white, 
the black being of the blackest and the white of the 
whitest, except perhaps for a slight brown touch about 
the ears. The sable antelope is a little short in the 
legs in proportion to the rest of its bulk, nor are the 
legs as finely shaped as is the case in most pictures of 
this animal. But for this it would be one of the most 
perfectly beautiful of living forms. 
Intermediate to some extent, perhaps, between the 
Oryxes and the Roan antelopes is the curious Addax, a 
creature confined in its distribution to the northern half 
of Africa, to the Sahara Desert, and the more fertile 
countries on the northern and southern fringes of that 
waste. The Addax also offers points of resemblance to 
the Cervicaprines. Its ears do not attain the same 
extravagant length as is characteristic of the Roan and EE : 
3 6 Photograph by W. P. Dando. 
some oryx antelopes. The orygine markings about the ae ROAR ETeeS 
face are reduced to a frontlet of thick black hair over the imatrasue was 
forehead and bold white marks at the corners of the eyes, 
extending towards the cheek. The hind quarters, belly, and all four limbs and tail are 
also white or whitish, the rest of the body being buff or greyish-brown. There is little 
or no mane along the ridge of the neck, but there is a heavy cobus-like mane along 
the throat. The horns appear to have once resembled in shape and general direction 
the horns of the Leucoryx, that is to say, to have grown backwards in a continuous line 
with the profile, and then to have assumed a convex curve with, perhaps, just the 
shghtest tendency to turn up at the tips. But in course of time the long and slender 
horns acquired first one spiral twist and then a second, and finally, in adult males at 
the present day, a third; so that the adult male addax offers a curious resemblance in 
his horns to the totally distinct Kudu. The Addax, which was once very common in 
Tunis, Algeria, and Tripoli, was known to the Romans, and is represented (curiously 
enough with but shghtly spiral twists to the horns) in the Roman mosaics and frescoes 
found in North Africa; yet it 
appears to have made less 
impression on the mind of the 
Afro-Roman artist than the 
Leucoryx, a creature which is 
now wholly extinct in fertile 
North Africa, but which con- 
stantly appears in designs of 
Roman art in Tunisia. The 
Leucoryx (Oryx leucoryx) is an 
intermediate form between the 
roan antelope group and the 
true oryxes. It has a heavily- 
tufted, cow-like tail, the usual 
oryx markings in brown and 
white on the face, white ears 
of moderate length, a white 
stomach, and the rest of the 
Photograph by Norman B. Smith, Esq. body pale buff to reddish- 
BEISA ORYX (Oryx Beisa). brown in colour. ‘The horns 
