3o8 RECORDS OF BIG GAME 



ELAND (Taurotragus oryx). 



Doo of the Masaras. Mofo of the Mashonas. 



Ee-pofo of the Makalakas. Mpofu of Swahih'. 



Eland of the Dutch and English. Mpofu in the Barotse country. 



Impofo of the Amandebele. Mpofu in the Lake Ngami country. 



Insefo of the Masubias and Oo-schefo of the Macubas. 



Batongas. Pofo of the Bechuanas. 

 Tsefu in the Chilala and Chibisa countries. 



In addition to being the largest of all antelopes, eland are dis- 

 tinguished from their immediate relatives by the presence of horns in 

 both sexes ; these forming a close spiral like a screw, with an upward 

 and outward direction. Female horns are more slender than those of 

 the bulls. Other distinctive features of the genus are to be found in 

 the large dewlap and the long, tufted, ox-like tail. 



Bulls of the common eland stand from 5 feet 9 inches to as much 

 as 6|- feet at the shoulder. They have a large tuft of brown hair on 

 the forehead, and the horns are of moderate length and stoutness. The 

 typical race {T. oryx typicus), which formerly extended from the Cape 

 nearly to the Zambesi, has a uniformly tawny skin, without transverse 

 white stripes or a dark brown band above the knees ; and appears to 

 be the largest form. Apparently somewhere in Rhodesia a dark brown 

 band is assumed by immature bulls. And as we go northward towards 

 the Zambesi, and thence north and east into the heart of the continent, 

 the bulls have not only this dark leg-band, but the body in both sexes 

 is marked by fine vertical white lines. As this striped variety was 

 discovered by Livingstone and his companions, it has been appropriately 

 named T. oryx livingstonianus. Westward the species ranges into 

 Angola. 



Throughout Southern Africa, largely owing to the skin-hunters, 

 eland are now becoming exceedingly scarce ; and they have already 

 more or less completely disappeared from Cape Colony, Natal, the 

 Orange Free State, Griqualand West, and the Transvaal. In the 

 northern Kalahari, where they subsist for a great part of the year with- 

 out water, large herds are still to be met with. No species of large 

 game is more easily approached than eland, and, as a rule, none succumbs 

 more speedily to the bullet. Occasionally female eland develop horns 

 in which the spiral is almost obsolete and the length exaggerated ; these 

 have been supposed to indicate a distinct species {Antilope triangularis). 



