The Inyala 457 



science. It could not have been a bushbuck, the size of the animal and 

 the length of its horns preclude that possibility. Besides, this latter 

 antelope is common on the Shire, and a careful perusal of Captain Faulkner's 

 pages shows him to have been well acquainted with it. Had Captain 

 Faulkner described his unidentified specimen as ' of a grayish colour, and 

 covered with white stripes, or white spots and stripes,' instead of with 

 white spots only, the whole description, meagre though it is, would have 

 been applicable to a male inyala, which the length and shape of the horns 

 and the standing height at the shoulder seem to show that it was. If not, 

 there must exist in that district a nearly allied species still unknown to 

 science, which I do not think is likely, though it would be worth while 

 to make careful inquiries amongst the natives living near Cape Maclear 

 as to all the antelopes of the bushbuck tribe with spiral horns with which 

 they are acquainted in order to clear up the mystery." 



Such inquiries have been made, I believe, by Mr. A. Sharpe, but with- 

 out eliciting any information whatever on the subject, so that this mystery 

 still remains unsolved. 



The inyala is an inhabitant of dense thickets in the immediate 

 neighbourhood of a river or lagoon, and is never found either in open 

 country or far away from water. Baldwin speaks of these antelopes as 

 having been numerous in Amatongaland, to the south of Delagoa Bay, 

 in 1854, and says that the females might then often be seen in large herds. 

 At the present day I think I am correct in stating that the inyala can 

 nowhere be seen in herds, except perhaps in certain districts of Zululand, 

 where it has been rigidly protected of late years. Mr. Whitaker, a trader, 

 who had lived for many years on the Tembe River to the south of Delagoa 

 Bay, in the midst of country where these antelopes are still fairly common, 

 told me that he had never seen more than five inyalas together, and from 

 my own small experience of them in September and October 1896, I 

 should have thought that they were not gregarious at all like koodoos, but 

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