22 THE ANIMALS OF NORTHERN AFRICA 



rich reddish brown coat merging in places into black, and enormous black horns on 

 which the knots are but slightly developed. It is a native of the high mountains of 

 Simien, in central Abyssinia, and has only of late years become fully known in Europe. 

 Further evidence of the intimate relationship existing between 

 the fauna of northern Africa and the other Mediterranean countries 

 is afforded by the Dorcas gazelle (Gazella dorcas), a species with the typical lyi'ate 

 gazelle-horns which ranges from the wilder districts of Algeria, Tunis, and Tripoli 

 eastwards into Egypt and the Egyptian Sudan, and is represented by allied species 

 in the deserts of Syria and Palestine. The edmi, or Atlas gazelle (G. cuvieri) is, 

 on the other hand, a mountain-species confined to the north-western corner of 

 Africa, although possessing near relatives in south-western Asia. The rhim, 

 or Loder's gazelle (G. leptoceros), characterised by its slender and compara- 

 tively straight horns, has much the same distribution, and may be found not 

 uncommonly in parts of Tunis, Algeria and the Sudan. 



According to an English sportsman, the rhim — Arabic el rhime and Tamahaq 

 Jiankat — is the common gazelle of the Sahara. In the neighbourhood of Rhadamis 

 great numbers of them are killed by the Arabs for the sake of their hides, which 

 are dressed and coloured with a dye made from the rind of pomegranates previous 

 to exportation. These gazelles are especially numerous in the Ergs district, but 

 are also found in all parts of the Sahara where there is sufficient vegetation to 

 afford them nutriment. Northwards of El-Oued-Souf, the only places in which 

 they are to be met with are the district lying to the south-west of Bou Chama and 

 near Sef-el-Menadi. Their horns are offered for sale in numbers in the bazar 

 at Biskra, where skins may likewise be occasionally obtained. Some specimens of 

 the horns of the bucks are so like those of the edmi that they are frequently sold 

 as such. As a rule, however, the horns of the rhim present the appearance of a 

 long, evenly tapering V> while those of the edmi are more inclined to be parallel, 

 and usually take a forward and inward turn a little below the tips, 

 white oryx ana Most of the North African mammals mentioned above are, as 



Addax. already mentioned, essentially Mediterranean types, having near 

 relatives in southern Europe or south-western Asia. We come now to two which 

 are exclusively African, or rather we might say Ethiopian, in distribution ; the term 

 Ethiopian Africa being a convenient one to apply to that portion of the great 

 continent lying to the south of the northern tropic, the fauna of which is so 

 essentially different from that of North Africa, Europe, and Asia. These are the 

 white oryx (Oryx algazel) and the addax (Addax nasomaculatus), both of which 

 have a light-coloured dress specially adapted to a desert existence. The white 

 oryx has a relative — the Beatrix oryx (Oryx leucoryx) — in the deserts of Arabia and 

 Syria, which may be a survivor marking the route of the migration of the ancestors 

 of the modern Ethiopian mammals into Africa from India. The white oryx and 

 the addax have, however, probably reached their present habitat by crossing the 

 Sahara. The white oryx, sometimes known as the sabre-horned antelope, differs 

 from its Ethiopian relatives by its scimitar-shaped horns, as it also does by its 

 buffish white coat with patches of bright chestnut. These chestnut patches, it may 

 be added, doubtless indicate the original colour of this antelope before it took to 

 a purely desert existence. 



