412 Great and Small Game of Africa 



Dugmore obtained his specimen, I saw a small herd of seven on the 

 banks of the Molo River below the Ravine Station, but they were so wild 

 and unapproachable that I could not get near them, and had to content 

 myself with a long and hungering look through a telescope. In October 

 1897, when crossing the Mau plateau with Colonel Macdonald, we saw 

 a herd of eleven at an altitude of 8000 feet. One of them was a very 

 fine bull, much darker than the rest, but again they were quite un- 

 approachable. In July of the following year a fine old solitary bull 

 was killed by a Government clerk named De Silva on the Molo River, 

 about 25 miles from the Ravine Station, and the head is now in my 

 possession. On my way down country in October last, I had the good 

 fortune to come across a herd of seven by the woodside in a grand 

 position for a stalk, and bagged the two best heads, but both unfortunately 

 were cows, there being no bull with them. This was at a place called 

 Gabrauni in the Kiyu hills south of Machakos. These two heads with 

 scalps, as well as the skull of the bull shot by Mr. de Silva, have been 

 pronounced by Mr. Rowland Ward, who has had great numbers from all 

 parts of Africa through his hands, to be beyond a doubt the true roan. 



From the above records it will be seen that this beast is very rare 

 in East Africa, though fairly well distributed. Since writing the above 

 I have seen the Proceedings of the Zoological Society for April 1899, in which 

 Mr. Oscar Neumann, a German traveller and naturalist, records having shot 

 five of these antelopes out of one herd on the river Bubu between Irangi and 

 Mount Gurui, and on the strength of a few minor details in the matter of 

 body-colouring, which appear to me too trivial for serious consideration, 

 has proposed to make it a new species under the name of H. rufopallidus. 



The roan antelope is so well known that no description is necessary, and 

 any little variations in colour, which no doubt do exist in many other animals 

 with a wide geographical range, may be attributed to local variations. 



Now that the Soudan is being opened up, specimens of the so-called 



