ORDER RUMINANTIA. 243 



brown, the posterior part ochery ; the tail almost five inches 

 long, is gray, tipt with white, but has no real tuft at the 

 end ; the legs are slender, rather long, and the hoofs small, 

 pointed, and black ; round the eyes there is a dark circle, 

 enclosed within one of a whitish colour ; the face is more 

 mixed with ochre and brown, and the hair close and harder ; 

 the chaffron dark-brown, and the throat almost white. 



The females are smaller, without horns, but provided 

 with four mammae and inguinal pores ; but the texture of 

 the hair, and distribution of the colours, is nearly the same 

 as in the males. We have compared three of them, and 

 one male. The species has similar manners as the former, 

 living in pairs, or small families, the males suffering no 

 adults of their sex in company. When they are observed 

 in greater numbers, it is occasioned by the attraction of 

 water, a rare element in South Africa, but most particu- 

 larly in the barren districts of the west coast, where they 

 mostly reside. The females bear but one kid at a time, 

 which is at first almost fawn-coloured. It is an animal of 

 great swiftness, moving with wonderful rapidity by length- 

 ened stretches, close to the ground, so as to seem to glide 

 over the desert like a mist driven by the winds, and, favoured 

 by the indistinct colours of the fur, is immediately out of 

 sight. The Bushmen, and western tribes make lance heads, 

 awls, and other tools, of the horns, and. occasionally, cloaks 

 of their skins for the women *. 



* On this and many others of the Cape Animal, I owe much of 

 my information to *.he late Colonel Graham, who, as C lonel of the 

 Cape Corps, commander of the interior, and a keen and indefati- 

 gable sportsman, had collected numerous facts on the local natural 

 history of the Colony, which it was his duty often to traverse in 

 various directions, where he was settled, and fated to die, in the 

 full vigour of life. I would fain say more of one whom I respected 

 as a private gentleman, and admired as a soldier, in the tumultuous 

 scenes of war. 



