WILD BEASTS AND THEIR WAYS. 
A series of articles on popular Zoology. 
By Str Harry Jounston, G.C.M.G. 
TIT—ANTELOPES (Part IL) 
Illustrated with original drawings, paintings, and photographs by the Author and others. 
HE Bubaline are a well-marked sub-family of antelopes which include the gnus, the 
hartebeests, and the topis.* These animals are among the most specialised of the 
antelopes in certain directions, but it is difficult to say which of the three sections 
into which they are divided is the least specialised. The gnus retain the primitive 
four teats, but have acquired horns which differ in type from those of all other 
antelopes. They have also developed much-expanded muzzles and disproportionately 
large heads. In the hartebeests the horns retain the annular ridges, and in the topis 
they are of more normal gazelline type, not unlike those of the smaller species of 
cobus; but in all these forms there are only two teats. The hartebeests, some species 
of which offer approximation to the gnus in the shape and direction of the horns, 
have developed exaggeratedly long and narrow heads. But for thew reduced mamme 
(only two) they might be the ancestors 
of the gnus. The only outside antelope 
which offers any marked resemblance to the 
bubalines is the pallah, the horns of which 
might very well have been the original type 
from which, by a process of concentration 
and shortening, the peculiar types of horns 
in the hartebeest, gnu, and topi might have 
been developed. But to account for the four 
mamme of the gnu, the ancestral and allied 
types of the original bubalines must have 
had four teats; the pallah has only two. 
Moreover, the pallah has lost the anteorbital 
eland or tear bag, which, though small, is 
Ss present in the bubalines; and the pallah has 
Photograph by C. Knight. molar teeth more of the type of the gazelle, 
Be eee ede eee): while the molar teeth in the bubalines have 
tall, narrow crowns. On the whole the present writer is disposed to think that the 
pallah is a much-specialised descendant of a cervicaprine type which in another direction 
gave rise to the topis, gnus, and hartebeests. It is stated that one of the existing 
hartebeests (Swayne’s) occasionally possesses four mamme. If this could be proved as 
a fact it would make it much more possible to argue that the hartebeests may have 
been the central stock from which the gnus developed in one direction and the topis 
in another. At the present time the least specialised hartebeest is Swayne’s, and the 
least specialised topi is Hunter’s antelope.t I would poimt out what has not hitherto 
been sufficiently noticed by naturalists, that the parent form of the bubalines possibly 
possessed a white chevron mark between the eyes across the forehead. This still lmgers 
in Swayne’s and the Cape hartebeests. It is strongly marked in Hunter’s antelope 
(vide Mlustration), and it reappears again in one form of gnu, the Nyasaland gnu, which 
was named after the present writer. } 
* These animals are also styled Bastard Hartebeests, Bonteboks, Tsesébes, etc. Topi is an Hast African 
name applied to them which seems on the whole the most convenient to adopt, as it is not, like Bontebok 
given to a rather peculiar form. 
+ Damaliscus hunterv. + Though the first specimen was shot by Mr. H. C. McDonald. 
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