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it in fair numbers up the Tana river. I have never seen it myself south of 
the Sabaki, though doubtless it is to be met with there also in suitable places. 
At Merereni, where the country seems admirably suited to its habits, although 
I was shooting there for some time in 1885 and 1886, I never saw one, 
though fifteen miles further south, near Mambrui, I observed its spoor. This 
confirmed me in my theory that the Oribi is very partial to the vicinity of 
cultivated tracts, and I do not remember having seen one in an uninhabited 
district. At Taka, a small village on the mainland opposite Patta Island, I 
saw great numbers in 1885. 
“Tn the vicinity of this village there was a great deal of land which at one 
time had been under cultivation, but was then lying fallow and covered with 
coarse dry grass, about two feet high. This afforded excellent covert, and, as 
the colour of these little Antelopes closely resembles that of dry grass, it was 
very difficult to see them. Except in one way, stalking them was quite 
hopeless. I found that the only plan to get them was to walk them up with 
one or two beaters on each side of me, and shoot them with a gun loaded 
with $. 8S. G. shot. They lie so close that they will let the sportsman get 
within ten or fifteen yards of them before they will move, but they rarely 
give him a chance of a shot under from forty to fifty yards. When they first 
get up it is only possible to follow their movements by the waving of the grass. 
It is necessary, however, always to be prepared for a snap-shot, as after going 
some twenty to thirty yards they will bound up into the air, offering a capital 
chance, which may be the only one, as they will be out of range before they 
again appear in like manner. This bounding into the air is, I believe, to 
enable them to see where they are going to, and it is a curious fact that 
when they alight they invariably do so on their hind legs, not unlike a 
Kangaroo. 
“An Oribi, even when only slightly wounded, will, as a rule, go a very 
short distance before lying down, and the sportsman should, therefore, be 
careful to follow up all those that he thinks he may have touched.” 
Besides Mr. Haggard’s skulls from Lamu, on which Thomas founded this 
species, and a head from the same place in Mr. Jackson’s private collection, 
there is in the National Museum the perfect skin and skull of a fine Oribi 
recently obtained in East Africa and presented by Mr. A. H. Neumann. 
No information as to its exact locality has as yet reached us, and as its skull 
differs somewhat from that of the Lamu O. haggardi, we are at present 
