24 
Finally, on March Ist last year, Mr. W. E. de Winton at a meeting of the 
Zoological Society exhibited a head-skin of this Antelope, brought home from 
Machakos, on the Uganda Road, by Mr. S. L. Hinde, which had been obtained 
from the Collector at that station. 
From the slopes of Mount Elgon we will now proceed further northwards 
to the swamps of the Bahr el Ghazal and the plains of the Atbara and Blue 
Nile. Here we iind the Roan Antelope, or at all events its nearly allied 
representative, long ago recognized, and dedicated, as a new species, to the 
memory of the well-known British sportsman and traveller the late Sir Samuel 
Baker. Heuglin, who was the author of the name “ bakeri,’ though well 
acquainted by report with this species (which he says occurs in herds in the 
open districts of Galabat and on the Atbara), tells us that he had only once 
seen it himself, and had derived most of his information on it from Baker, 
who, in his ‘ Albert Nyanza,’ vol. i. p. 340), speaking of the Latooka country 
on the right bank of the White Nile, between 4° and 5° N. lat., writes as 
follows :— 
“T saw varieties of Antelopes, including the rare and beautiful Maharif; but all 
were so wild, and the ground so open, that I could not get a shot. This was the more 
annoying, as the Maharif was an Antelope that I believed to be of a new species. It 
had often disappointed me; for although I had frequently seen them on the south-west 
frontier of Abyssinia, I had never been able to procure one, owing to their extreme 
shyness, and to the fact of their inhabiting open plains, where stalking was impossible. 
J had frequently examined them with a telescope, and had thus formed an intimate 
acquaintance with their peculiarities. The Mahari/f is very similar to the Roan Antelope 
of South Africa, but is mouse-coloured, with black and white stripes upon the face. 
The horns are exactly those of the Roan Antelope, very massive and corrugated, bending 
backwards to the shoulders. The withers are extremely high, which give a peculiarly 
heavy appearance to the shoulders, much heightened by a large and stiff black mane 
like that of a hog-maned horse. J have a pair of horns in my possession that I obtained 
through the assistance of a lion, who killed the Maharif while drinking near my tent; 
unfortunately the skin was torn to pieces, and the horns and skull were all that 
remained.” 
The well-known scientific traveller Dr. Schweinfurth also met with this 
Antelope in several localities in the course of his journeys (1868-71) among 
the upper affluents of the Bahr el Ghazal, and furnishes us with a long list of 
the vernacular names by which it is known among the various native tribes 
of that country. In the first volume of his ‘Im Herzen von Afrika’ (p. 237) 
he gives a good figure of its head, and tells us how, as he was one day deeply 
