139 
and could only quote the original descriptions, Sundevall and Gray con- 
sidered it to be merely a variety of Gazella dorcas. liippell, during his 
extensive travels in East Africa, seems never to have come across it, and does 
not mention it in any of his publications. 
The first author after its describers to recognize its existence was Heuglin, 
who in 1877, in the second volume of his ‘ Reise in Nordost-Afrika,’ writes 
of this species, the name of which he had previously misapplied to another 
Gazelle, and gives a coloured figure of its head and figures of two pairs of its 
horns. Heuglin met with G. leptoceros in the Libyan desert of Egypt, near 
the Natron Lakes and the Fayoum, where he states its Arabic name is 
** Abu el harab.” 
Sir Victor Brooke had never seen specimens of this Gazelle, and in his 
‘Monograph’ relies mainly upon Heuglin’s description. 
So matters remained until recent years, when examples of this Gazelle, or 
of a very closely allied form, turned up unexpectedly from a new quarter. 
Loche, Lataste, and other authorities on the zoology of Algeria had 
mentioned the existence far in the interior of that country of an Antelope 
called ‘‘ El Rim,” and examples of the horns of a problematical Gazelle called 
“El Reem ” had been brought to England from the shops at Biskra. In 1894 
an enthusiastic sportsman and naturalist, Sir Edmund Loder, F.Z.S., resolved 
to make a serious attempt to discover this mysterious animal, and proceeded 
to Algeria for that purpose. We cannot do better than transcribe for our 
readers Sir Edmund’s own account of the results of this successful expedition, 
which was read before the Zoological Society of London on June dth, 1894 :— 
“ Seventeen years ago (in 1877) I bought in the bazaar at Biskra several pairs of 
Gazelle horns. They obviously belonged to three species: Gazella dorcas, called by the 
Arabs ‘ Rezal’ ; Gazella cuvieri, which they call ‘Admi’; and a third called ‘ Reem,’ 
which I was not able to identify with any described species. All these horns were on 
frontal bones only. It is very rarely that the Arabs bring in any whole skulls or skins 
for sale, and I have never seen anything but frontlets of the ‘ Reem.’ 
“Tn 1891 and again in 1893 I went out to Algeria for the purpose of hunting Mouflon 
(Ovis tragelaphus). 
“In 1877 I had been prevented from going after them except for a few hours at a 
time. On these later trips I was more successful and secured some fine male Mouflon, 
a female of the large Mountain Gazelle (Gazella cuvieri), and a few specimens of 
Gazella dorcas. 
“ At Biskra I again found horns of the Reem, but got no information about it except 
