NOTES ON SOMALILAND, 293 
for Sportsmen” as at present worded),—I know of no locality where one can 
any longer count on meeting with them, so that without special permission 
to shoot in the said Reserve the sportsman has little chance of obtaining a 
specimen, Beaaieat's 
_ Even granted the “special permission,” the old buck Koodoo, like his 
parallel the Markhor of the Himalayas, is at all times a very difficult beast 
to circumvent, He lies up all day in the thickest cedar forest he can find, and 
only comes out at night to feed, returning to his shady retreat by sunrise, 
Tracking him up, except in rainy weather, is excessively difficult and fluky, 
as the crackling of your footsteps on the dry leaves and undergrowth warns 
him of your presence long before you can see him, and time after time your 
labour is only rewarded by the sound of his horns crashing through the 
brushwood as he gallops away out of sight. Ihave been out morning and 
evening for a week together, putting up two or three in this way every day, 
without ever setting eyeson one. On the other hand, the females and small 
bucks that you do not want to see constantly appear in the open at all hours 
_ of the day. 
LESSER KOODOO, 
(Strepsiceros imberbis). 
The Lesser Koodoo are, I think, on the whole less plentiful now than 
their bigger brethren, As with the latter there are very few in the present 
Protectorate except in the Reserve, where, however, in one or two localities 
they are still fairly common, 
Captain H. G. Swayne, I see, speaking of the Lesser Koodoo in his 
“Seventeen Trips through Somaliland,” mentions that the finest buck that 
he has seen or heard of carried horns measuring between 27 and 28 inches, 
and that “the average length of a good buck’s horns is about 25 inches,” 
I hesitate to differ from him, but cannot help thinking that in this latter 
remark he rather over estimates the average. What with the trophies brought 
in by numerous shikar-parties, and other horns passing through the Customs 
Houses at the Ports, I have seen a large number of Lesser Koodoo heads, 
but with the exception of the pair mentioned by Captain Swayne I know 
of no others touching 27 inches, and anything over 24 I should consider 
very rare now-a-days, An average head I should put as low as 21 inches, 
Hitherto I had always associated the Lesser Koodoo with scenery forming 
a fitting background to his handsome presence ;~green, shady glades, and 
fresh pastures ; but recently I met with them in such unlikely spots that I 
could hardly believe my eyes when I saw them. On both occasions it was 
far into the Haud, and at a season when. there was not a drop of water for 
thirty or forty miles, nor an atom of verdure—nothing as far as the eye could 
reach but a boundless expanse of parched prairie, studded here and there 
with a patch of mimosa trees or umbrella-shaped bushes, innocent of a single 
green leaf, and thirsting like the soil on which they grew, for the rain that 
