288 



A Breath from the Veldt 



By far the most interesting thing to me on my return to the old camp was 

 the skin of a bushbuck ewe which Piet had shot. This animal, and a buck 

 killed by Tace two or three days after our return, showed beyond question, a 

 connecting link between the old colony bushbuck and the harness bushbuck of the 

 Chobe that Selous describes as a distinct species. It is a vexed question amongst 

 zoologists as to what actually constitutes a distinct and separate species. Amongst 

 African mammals, for instance — notably the waterbucks, the pallahs, and the 

 bushbucks — the same animal, with local variation of size and colour, is some- 

 times classified under five or six different species. Rightly too ; though why this 

 racial distinction should be made between the harnessed bushbuck of the Chobe 

 and his bigger brother in the South it is hard to say, in face of the fact that the 



striped and otherwise decorated 

 eland of East Africa is commonly 

 identified with his congener of 

 Kalahari, a slightly larger animal 

 of uniform colour unbroken by 

 any particular markings. 



That the striped bushbuck of 

 the Chobe is identically the same 

 animal as its Southern congener 

 I have not the smallest doubt. 

 ^-^ So far as I know, no specimens 

 from eastern Mashonaland, where 

 the. connecting link occurs, have 

 ever been exhibited to naturalists in this country, so I hope the sketch of the 

 male on page 103 may be of some interest. The white stripes, though numeric- 

 ally the same as those of the Chobe form (that is to say, six on either side and 

 along the dorsal ridge), as well as the spots on the lower part of the haunch, are 

 not so clearly defined as in the Chobe ; nor in the specimens which I examined 

 were there any of the white horizontal bars on the flank which are noticeable 

 in the Northern form. Both the male and the female were much redder in the 

 coat, and might be taken for large specimens of the harnessed bushbuck.^ The 

 bushbuck is of a shy and retiring disposition, and but seldom off^ers the rifle- 

 shooter a chance. It is, moreover, one of the rarest of the smaller antelopes in 

 northern and eastern Mashonaland, and it is therefore not surprising that so very 



ROI RHEBUCK EWE MOVING OFF 



^ This red-coated bushbuck seems to me to closely resemble the bushbuck of the Webbe Shabeleh 

 (Somaliland) described by Captain Swayne. 



