982 MB. R. LYDBKKER ON THE SKIN [NoV. 28, 



especially from the long shaggy hair on the nape of the neck and 

 the absence of a mane, the specimen may be confidently assigned to 

 the genus Cobus. Additional evidence in favour of this reference 

 is afforded by the circumstance that the long hair on the middle 

 line of the back is reversed from a point some distance in advance 

 of the loins to the withers, exactly as in the Puku (C. vardoni). 



In size the animal to which the skin pertained must evidently 

 have been considerably larger than the species last mentioned, 

 and may have been more nearly comparable in this respect with 

 C. maria of the Bahr-el-Ghazal. In colour, the nape, the sides of 

 the buttocks, and thighs are bright chestnut-tawny ; the middle 

 line of the back, the hinder portion of the shoulders, and the 

 hind-quarters are the same chestnut-tawny mingled with blackish 

 brown ; the fore part of the shoulder, a line on the under surface 

 of the neck, the flanks, and the front surface of the fore-limbs 

 and of the lower part of the hind limbs are of a deep glossy 

 blackish brown, the under-parts being dirty white. 



The portion of the skin of the neck remaining, which seems to 

 have been cut off a considerable distance below the head, is 

 suggestive of a comparatively long-necked animal. And if this be 

 a correct inference, it would be natural to expect that the horns 

 were of a comparatively long and slender type. Now, in its dark 

 colour the skin is more like that of Cobus maria, of the swamps 

 of the White Nile, which is a species with comparatively long, 

 slender, and doubly curved horns ; and it is to that animal, rather 

 than to any other member of the genus Cobus, so far as the 

 materials permit of forming an opinion, that I am inclined to 

 consider the form represented by the skin before us most nearly 

 related. Altogether apart from the distance between the White 

 Nile and Lake Mweru, the skin under consideration is broadly 

 distinguished from the male of Cobus maria by the absence of the 

 white patch on the withers and the white line down the back of 

 the neck. As regards the female of the latter species, there is a 

 definite statement in the ' Book of Antelopes,' vol. ii. p. 122, 

 that it is similar in all respects to the buck, except for the lack of 

 horns ; but in the plate a female is figured M-ithout the white 

 saddle and neck-liue '. 



As thei'e is no other Antelope of which the skin is known that 

 presents any close resemblance to the specimen under consideration, 

 and since it is certainly distinct from the male of G. maria (being 

 itself probably a male specimen), I take leave to regard it as 

 representing a new species, for which I propose the name of Cobus 

 smitheDiaiii ; the skin represented in the figure (Plate LXXI.) being 

 of course the type. The species may be provisionally defined as a 

 large-sized Kob, differing from every other species of the genus 

 except C. maria, and distinguished from the male of the latter 

 by the absence of the white line down the back of the neck and 

 the patch of the same colour on the withers, in which region the 

 present species is chestnut. 



1 From a specimen that has recently come under my notice, the white neck- 

 line does not seem to be constant even in the bucks of C. maria. 



