72G JOURNAL, BOMBAY NATURAL HISTORY SOCIETY, Vol. XL 



As the result of constant inquiries during two and a half years -1 sojourn in 

 the Protectorate, I have come to the conclusion that nine out of ten Somalis 

 have never even beard of the Baira, much less seen it, and even in Somali 

 encampments in the neighbourhood, where I know the Baira to exist and 

 where I eventually shot a specimen, I found it was an even chance that any ' 

 man, from whom I asked for news of the whereabouts of Baira, would reply 

 that he did not know the animal. From this it may be inferred that, apart 

 from its rarity and local distribution, it is also a creature of extremely shy 

 and retiring habits. 



Captain H.G. Swayne in his admirable book "Seventeen Trips through Somali 

 Land" mentions that he first heard of the Baira as far back as 1891, when 

 his brother saw two of them in the Gadabursi Highlands, but failed to get 

 a shot. It was not, however, until 1894 that native shikaris, whom he had 

 commissioned to procure him a specimen, sent him home some skins, and one 

 Herr Menges at the same time obtained specimens upon which the animal 

 was described as a new species. Herr Menges was the collector and agent 

 of Plerr Hagenbeck, the well known animal provider of Hamburg (who, by the 

 bye, now offers to supply Siberian camels for Klondyke transport), and 

 resided at Berbera for some years collecting live specimens for shipment 

 to Europe ; and the preserved specimen or specimens of the Baira sent 

 home by him were, I believe, brought in by his native hunters. I left Somali 

 land in the Autumn of 1896, and up to that time, so far as I know, no sports- 

 man (except the brothers Swayne as above mentioned) had met with a 

 specimen, and the fact that Dr. Donaldson-Smith, in a fifteen months' explo- 

 ration from Berbera via Lake Rudolph to Lamu, c during which he made a most 

 careful aad complete zoological collection, never heard of the animal, makes 

 it probable that its distribution is confined to the plateaux of the Somali 

 Coast Protectorate, and possibly the highlands of Abyssinia. 



It was at Ali Maan in the Gadabursi country that Captain Swayne first heard 

 of the animal, and, as he says, very possibly it exists on the Wagar Mountain, 

 some forty miles from Berbera. Herr Menges' specimens were, I believe, 

 obtained from the Hegebo Plateau near Berbera, and it was on a similar 

 plateau, a little further to the west, that I met with the herd, of which one 

 member fell to my rifle. 



I was on a short trip from the Coast at the time, accompanied by my wife 

 and a friend from the Aden Garrison — ten days 1 hard-earned casual leave, 

 taken with a special view to looking up quite the biggest lion that ever was, 

 of whose recent movements I had reliable Jchubber. We had the most ex- 

 traordinary ill luck with this particular lion, who was evidently a magnate of 

 extended experience. Quite contrary to all leonine precedent, he behaved 

 very much in the same way that the hill tiger often does, or any tiger in 

 a populous locality when the weather is cool, namely, killed his quarry, had 



* Vide Through Unknown African Countries, Arnold & Co. 



