302 THROUGH SOMALILAND AND ABYSSINIA CHAP. 
together. Special wood had to be chosen, and it generally took 
from ten to twenty minutes to get a light. 
The skin on the withers of a bull beisa is much thicker than 
elsewhere, being about three-quarters of an inch thick. The 
average length of horns in a good bull is thirty-two inches, in a 
cow thirty-four inches. Young beisa, when caught and confined 
in an enclosure, sometimes show their stubborn, wild nature by 
charging the bars, head-down, and so killing themselves ; a case 
of this kind once occurred in Berbera. The flesh of a calf beisa 
is, in my opinion, more delicious than that of any other antelope, 
and lions are particularly fond of it. These calves, when young, 
are very like those of English cattle in appearance, but smaller, 
with stumpy, straight horns a few inches long. They give out 
a peculiar half-bleat, half-bellow, when attacked by dogs or 
wounded. We fell in with young calves about the middle of 
August in two successive years. Beisa sometimes strike side- 
ways with their horns as we use a stick. When very angry 
they lower them till nearly parallel with the ground, and make 
a dash forward for a few yards with surprising swiftness. Beisa 
are often seen in company with hartebeests and Plateau gazelles. 
THE Koopoo (Strepsiceros kudu) 
Native name, Gédir or Guridleh Gédir (male), Adér-yu (female) ; Adér-yu 
(collective name for herd-animals of both sexes and all ages) 
Koodoo are found in mountainous or broken ground where 
there is plenty of bush and good grass and water. The best 
koodoo- grounds in Somaliland are Gdélis Range and the 
Gadabursi Hills. Koodoo scarcely exist in the parts of Ogadén 
I have visited. Either they never existed there, or, as my 
followers declared, they died of the great epidemic of cattle 
disease four or five years ago. Ogddén Somalis constantly offer 
to show koodoo to a sportsman, but they appear to mean the 
lesser koodoo ; and this they call Gédr, knowing apparently of 
only the one kind. The Ishak tribes, on the other hand, have 
names for both. 
Sometimes a solitary old bull will make his mid-day lair close 
to water, in some quiet part of the hills. They are very retiring, 
and live in small families, two bulls and seven cows being the 
largest number I have noticed together. They prefer the 
steepest mountains, but wander at night in search of grass in 
