THE INYALA AT HOME 
haunted coast jungles of Portuguese East Africa. The ac- 
companying colored plate will give an idea of the peculiar form 
and coloring of the buck, whose fine lyrate horns and 
mantling fringes give him a very distinguished ap- 
pearance. The female is rich rufous red, with a black line 
along the spine, and many narrow white stripes down the sides 
and haunches; she is hornless. Although long known, it is 
only since 1896 that we have gained much knowledge of its 
habits or obtained specimens, the latter chiefly through the 
efforts of F. C. Selous. Everywhere this antelope spends its 
life in the densest, miasmatic thickets; and in much of its 
range the natives refuse to eat its flesh. The trials the inyala 
hunter must undergo may be judged by the difficulty Selous 
met with in securing his first one. 
Inyala. 
““We now commenced to creep very cautiously through the thick thorny 
bush, making our way for the most part through tunnels made by hippo- 
potami during their night excursions in search of food. | We had usually 
to walk bent nearly double — often having to creep on our hands and 
knees; and, as the day was now very hot and steamy, we were soon 
bathed in perspiration. 
“We had been creeping about the bush in the uncomfortable manner 
I have described for about an hour, when we suddenly came upon a little 
circular opening some fifty or sixty yards in diameter. As we approached 
the edge of this open space, advancing very cautiously in a stooping atti- 
tude down a hippopotamus path, my guide suddenly dropped to the ground. 
As he did so, I got a clear view past him, and saw standing amongst the 
grass and bush,.. a great black shaggy form, which, indistinctly as I 
could see it in the deep shadow of the bush, I knew was an inyala ram — 
the first that my eyes had ever looked upon in the flesh.” 
That this hunting may be dangerous sport, as well as risky to one’s 
health appears from a memorandum of another hunter: ‘Living, the bush 
buck is dangerous enough; when wounded, one I shot through the heart 
at eighty yards charged me like a flash of lightning, falling dead ten yards 
from my feet; and another, shot by an acquaintance of mine, also through 
the heart, drove his bayonetlike horns into the stomach of a native, killing 
him on the spot.” 
By such perils and pains are the treasures of our museums collected! 
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