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Our first knowledge of this species is due to the great explorer Livingstone. 
When in the Barotse country beyond Libonta, in November 1853, he found 
“the wild animals in enormous herds, and fared sumptuously. It was 
grievous, however,” he adds, ‘“‘to shoot the lovely creatures, they were so 
tame.” While waiting for an answer to a message sent to a native chief he 
“lay looking at the graceful forms of the beautiful pokus, lechés, and other 
antelopes.” In a footnote to this passage in his ‘ Missionary Travels’ he 
informs us that the Poku ‘is a new species which he proposes to name after 
the African traveller Major Vardon.” We do not believe that Livingstone 
ever published a description of his species, but in the same work (p. 71) will 
be found a full-page plate, from the inimitable pencil of Joseph Wolf, 
illustrating the “New African Antelopes (Poku and Leché) discovered by 
Oswell, Murray, and Livingstone.” 
In 1864 we have a further contribution to our knowledge of this animal 
from the pen of Sir John Kirk. In his article on the Mammals of Zambesia 
read before the Zoological Society of London on December 15th of that year, 
he tells us that the Poku ‘is one of the three water-antelopes common to 
the marshes of the Chobi and Zambesi. With the Leché it often mixes, the 
habits of the two being very similar, the Poku being less aquatic and being 
found more often on dry ground. It is known by its smaller size, its more 
erect carriage, and its plumper neck. The horns are less turned backwards, 
and partake more of the aspect of the Reit-bock.” 
Mr. Selous’s excellent field-notes on the Poku, contained in the ‘ Proceedings’ 
of the same Society for 1881, and subsequently reprinted in his ‘ Hunter's 
Wanderings,’ deserve to be quoted at full length :— 
“The only place where I ever met with this species was in a small tract 
of country extending along the southern bank of the Chobe for about 
seventy miles westward from its Junction with the Zambesi. They are never 
found at more than 200 or 300 yards from the river, and are usually to be 
seen cropping the short grass along the water’s edge, or lying in the shade 
of the trees and bushes scattered over the alluvial flats which have been 
formed here and there by the shifting of the river’s bed. That they exist, 
however, eastwards along the southern bank of the Zambesi as far as the 
Victoria Falls (about sixty miles from the mouth of the Chobe) I think 
probable, as I saw one shot on the very brink; but though I followed the 
river’s bank all the way, I never met with another till I reached the Chobe. 
