208 Animal Life 
a few specimens of the nearly extinct Damaliscus 
pygargus, or Bontebok. Formerly this handsome 
antelope ranged over much of South Africa south of 
the Vaal River. Its forehead and nose, right down 
to the nostrils, its rump, belly, and parts of its limbs, 
its ears, and the upper part of its tail are snowy 
' white, the rest of its coloration bemg black and 
whitish-erey, with touches of yellow. The closely 
allied blesbok (D. albifrons) has the same white blaze 
on the nose, but less white about the limbs, and none 
on the hind quarters. It inhabits the northern parts 
of South Africa where it exists at all. 
We now come to the consideration of the 
Tragelaphine, which are a totally distinct group from 
the true antelopes, and much more nearly related to 
the cattle. In all these creatures the nose and muffle 
are naked and wet, as in cattle, the ears are broad rather than long, are like those of 
cattle in shape, and the interior is never filled up with hair as in most of the true 
antelopes, a fringe of long hair only growing (as in the cattle) from the inner and 
outer edges. All of them tend to be more or less spotted and striped with white, the 
most permanent of these white markings being two large spots on the cheeks, a white 
line round the nostrils and upper lp, a white patch under the chin, round the lower 
part of the throat, and on the feet just above the hoofs. When white markings 
appear on the more primitive types of cattle 16 is in the same places. The original 
type of horns in the tragelaphs tends to be of a rather three-cornered structure, with 
a well-marked ridge in front. The horns are entirely without the regular annular 
ridges of the antelopes, capricorns, goats, and sheep; but the longitudinal outer ridge 
formed by the original three-cornered structure of the horns has a tendency to persist 
even where the horn in its development has become rounded. A marked feature of 
the tragelaphine horns is their spiral structure. This is but feebly indicated in the 
Nilgai of India, a creature which it is, perhaps, advisable to make into a sub-family 
by itself, although it has considerable tragelaphine affinities. But even in the nilgai 
horns (which are very short im comparison to the great bulk of the animal) there 
is the beginning of a spiral twist. Several of the tragelaphs develop in the male a 
throat mane. This in the nilgai is reduced to a single tuft. Im the eland it is more 
restricted than in the kudu, and is combined with a great development of dewlap, another 
ox-like feature. There is also a tendency to develop manes along the ridge of the neck, 
and also (much more so) along the line of the back. In the larger tragelaphs, except 
the bushbucks and inyalas, the tail is long and bovine (though rather bushy in the 
kudu). In the bushbucks it is shorter and broader. In most of the inyalas it is 
fairly long, but flat and broadly clothed with hair. 
The nilgai (Boselaphus) inhabits the whole peninsula of India south of the 
Himalayas. It is a large animal, almost the size of an ox, but standing much higher 
at the withers than at the hind quarters. Its molar teeth resemble those of the oxen 
more than they do the shorter-crowned, simpler teeth of the tragelaphs. The male alone 
bears horns, and these, as already mentioned, are disproportionately small, never reaching as 
’ great a length as twelve inches. The horns at their base are triangular, but have become 
rounded towards the slightly re-curved tips. The horn cores, however, rise much nearer . 
to the orbit than is the case with the oxen. (A slightly intermediate type is met with 
in the buffaloes, in which also the shape of the skull and relative length of the nasal 
bones are a little more like the boselaphine type.) On the whole, the nilgai is the most 
Photo by W. P. Dando. 
HARNESSED ANTELOPE (2. scriptus). 
