Waller's Gazelle 



,73 



gazelles. It seems to think, if it can only hide behind the bushes that it is 

 not necessary to remove itself very far from threatened danger. 



The meat is poor, and is, like the flesh of all other game animals in East 

 Africa, without a particle of fat and consequently dry and tasteless. Only 

 a few of the natives will eat it, as they consider it looks too much like 

 camel, with its depressed nostrils and large eyes, and they believe that if 

 they eat it, a sickness of some kind will carry off their camels ; to this 

 lucky superstition the gerenuk owes an immunity from native persecution, 

 at least from all save the Midgans, for these born hunters, and, so far 

 as the Somalis are concerned, social outcasts, eat almost everything they kill. 



The males of the Waller's gazelle carry handsome lyrate horns, the 

 longest measuring something over 14 inches along the curve. 1 The horns 

 are annulated, sometimes nearly to the tips, these pointing forward and 

 slightly inward. The females are without horns. 



The gerenuk is never seen, so far as my observation goes, on the 

 treeless plains, such as those on the Haud, Morar prairie and the like, but 

 resorts to hillsides and summits, these often barren, but having valleys 

 between covered with thick thorn forests. It may be that when seen on 

 such open places, the animals were merely passing from one valley to 

 another. 



The usual gait of this gazelle is a slouching trot, with the head and neck 

 carried very low and on a level with the body. When really frightened, 

 it gallops with considerable speed, stopping, however, at intervals to look 

 back at the object of its alarm ; if at such times the hunter is concealed, 

 the gerenuk soon forgets its fears and commences to feed or resume its slow 

 careless walk. 



Certain individuals of this species, of both sexes, have on either side of 

 the face a white stripe running from the eye often to the end of the nose, 



1 The finest recorded pair of horns measure 17 inches. These were procured by the Duke of 

 Orleans from Somaliland.— Ed. 



