234 THE LIVING ANIMALS OF THE WORLD 
districts of British East Africa. It frequents thick scrubby jungle, and is said to be exceedingly 
watchful and wary. It lives either in pairs or in small families, but never congregates in large 
herds. Like all the tragelaphine antelopes, this species is a leaf-eater, and feeds principally 
during the night, lying up in thick bush during the heat of the day. 
There remains to be mentioned but one other group of antelopes, the ELANDS, large, 
heavily built animals, which belong to the present group, but differ from all species of kudu, 
sitatunga, and bushbuck, inasmuch as both sexes are horned. There are two forms of the 
CoMMON ELAND—namely, the grey variety of South-western Africa, and the striped animal, which 
is found in the countries farther north and east. The two forms grade one into the other, 
and are absolutely identical in their habits and mode of life, the differences between them 
being merely superficial. To the south of the twenty-third parallel of south latitude all elands 
are of a uniform fawn colour, except the old animals, which look dark grey, from the fact that 
the scantiness of their coats allows the 
dark colour of the skin to show through 
the hair. Old males, when standing in 
the shade of a tree, appear to be of a 
deep blue-grey in colour, and are known 
to the colonists of South Africa as “‘ blue 
bulls.” In Rhodesia, South-east Africa, 
and the countries to the north of the 
Zambesi, all the elands are bright 
chestnut-red when young, with:a black 
line down the centre of the back from 
the ‘withers to the tail, broad. black 
patches on the backs of the fore legs above 
the knees, and eight or nine white stripes 
oneach side. When they grow old, the 
ruddiness of the ground-colour gradually 
fades, the black:markings on the fore legs 
die out, and the white stripes become 
indistinguishable at a short distance, the 
old : bulls ‘looking: deep blue-grey in 
general colour. Every intermediate stage 
of colouring between the unstriped and 
the highly coloured forms of eland is to 
be found: in the district lying between 
the central portions of the Kalahari 
Fe da Desert and the Zambesi River. Old male 
i sihlacsk iab ntiiedunis i NE el Unlike the huduy buh sexes stands south of the Zambesi develop a 
growth of long, bristly black hair on the 
forehead, which often hangs over their eyes and extends half-way down their noses. North of 
the Zambesi this growth of hair is not nearly so luxuriant. 
I have carefully measured the standing height at the withers of many old male elands in 
the interior of South Africa, and found that it varied from 5 feet 8 inches to § feet 10 inches. 
The horns of bulls in their prime measure from 26 inches to 33 inches in length, but old 
bulls wear their horns down very much. The cows carry: longer, though thinner horns than 
the bulls. 
The range of the eland once extended from Cape Agulhas to the White Nile, but it has 
become extinct in many districts of Southern Africa, and in almost every other portion of its 
range has, like all other tragelaphine antelopes, suffered so cruelly from the recent visitation 
of rinderpest that it has now become a scarce animal all over Africa. 
During the rainy season elands are usually met with in small herds of from four or five 
Photo by 4 ellan] ( Highburg 
