iUOL ef 
The most successful results, however, in breeding the White-tailed Gnu 
have been obtained by Mr. F. E. Blaauw, Secretary to the Royal Zoological 
Society of Amsterdam, in his park at Westerveld, near Hilversum, in North 
Holland, on which he has been kind enough to furnish us with the following 
information :—Mr. Blaauw purchased his first pair of Gnus in 1886 from the 
Jardin d’Acclimatation at Paris. They arrived in winter and were kept in 
a covered shed without artificial warmth until the following spring, when 
they were turned out to a grass enclosure of about eight acres, well sheltered 
by plantations, and with a shed divided into compartments in one corner. 
The Gnus and their descendants have been kept in this enclosure ever 
since. In winter they are usually confined inside the house and fed on hay 
and oats, because the young ones are frequently born in winter and require 
a certain amount of protection. In the summer the Gnus never enter the 
shed, and subsist entirely by grazing. 
Treated in this fashion the Gnus in Mr. Blaauw’s possession have 
succeeded in a wonderful way. From the single pair originally purchased 
and the two young females first born, no less than fourteen young Gnus have 
been successfully reared, and only two have been lost, having been born in 
the open field during severe frost. 
Mr. Blaauw’s present herd cousists of the original pair purchased in 1886, 
two adult females (the offspring of this pair born in 1886 and 1887), and two 
young ones born in May and June of the present year. 
Mr. Blaauw has ascertained by frequent observation that the period of 
gestation in the White-tailed Gnu varies from 84 to 84 months. Only a 
single young one has ever been produced at a birth. ‘lhe female suckles 
her young for seven or eight months, but it commences to eat grass when 
about a week old. 
In the ‘ Proceedings’ of the Zoological Society of London, Mr. Blaauw 
has published an article on the development of the horns of the young Gnu, 
two of the figures of which we are enabled to reproduce here by the kind 
permission of that Society. The first figure (15 4) represents the first stage of 
the horns, in which they are perfectly straight and more or less divergent ; 
the second figure (15¢) represents the horns when the animal is about 
19 months old. The former straight portion has now become the terminal 
half, and the basal portion, though not yet quite fully developed, inclines 
downwards and outwards. The bases of the horns are still far apart, and 
