Wild Beasts and Their Ways 205 
The gnus (Connochetes) are really extraordinary animals, especially the White-tailed 
species, and it is little wonder that they were a great puzzle to the naturalists of the 
first half of the nineteenth century, whose classification was as a rule based entirely on 
external appearances. The hind quarters—and in the white-tailed gnu, the body—are 
shapely, and very much like those of a pony in build. In the less specialised Brindled 
enu (CG. taurinus) there is a disproportionate height at the withers which is accentuated 
by the thick and drooping mane which, together with the heavy growth of hair on the 
throat, Jaws, and nose, gives the creature the aspect of a bison. The tail in the gnus is 
long and heavily tufted, the tuft in the white-tailed gnu (Connochetes gnu) being developed 
into a beautiful white plume which reaches from the tip of the tail nearly to the crown. 
In the brindled gnu (C. tawrinws) the nose is perhaps broader, and the head longer and 
clumsier, than the white-tailed species. The horns are slightly less specialised. Their shape 
is ilustrated by my drawing on page 203. This illustration is drawn from the 
skull of the white-maned brindled gnu of East Africa, which exhibits traces in its 
horns of the lost annulations. In the white-tailed gnu the boss at the bases of the 
horns is greatly exaggerated and flattened until it resembles a similar feature in the 
African buffalo, and in this animal the horns 
take a much stronger downward curve than 
in the brindled gnu. The white-tailed gnu 
has a brush of coarse bristly hair growing 
just above the bare surface of the nostrils. 
It has also a goat-like beard on the lower 
jaw, no mane along the throat, but a heavy 
growth of hair on the brisket and chest. 
There is also a hog mane along the ridge 
of the neck. The rest of the face and body 
is covered with fairly short hair, and the 
animal looks sleek and well groomed. In 
the blue or brindled gnu the mane along 
the ridge of the neck is almost as abundant 
as in the domestic horse. There is no ¢ : 
or = o = ze 2 — 4 Sek ahs ma SE 
growth of hair along the brisket, but con Sag hy GLEN 
tinuously along the throat to the chin. The WHITE-TAILED GNU (Connochetes gnu). 
brush of hair along the forehead varies in 
erowth in the different sub-species, but in all of them is confined to the upper part 
of the nose, and does not extend to the very edge of the nostrils. In the Nyasaland 
enu this nasal brush is somewhat reduced in size, and gives place to the more 
conspicuous feature of the white chevron. In the gnu of British Hast Africa (C. tawrinus 
albojubatus) the throat-mane is yellowish white, and white hairs also appear in the 
heavy mane along the neck. Connochetes tawrinus is styled the brindled gnu from 
the vertical lines of differently directed hairs on the sides of the neck and _ body. 
The different set of the hair in these streaks gives the impression of dark grey stripes. 
Somewhat similar effects are seen on the neck of certain hartebeests. The ears in the 
brindled gnu are long like those of the hartebeests; they are shorter in the white-tailed 
enu. The tail of the brindled gnu is almost covered with a plume of coarse black 
hair, and bears such a remarkable resemblance to a horse’s tail that this detail, coupled 
with the horse-like mane and pony-like build, was sufficient excuse for the showman in 
the earlier type of menagerie to call the gnu the “Horned Horse.” The distribution 
of the gnus deserves a little description. The white-tailed gnu is entirely confined to 
Africa south of the Zambezi, where it is almost extinct owing to a hundred years’ 
slaughter at the hands of sportsmen, a slaughter which was intensified during the recent 
