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199 
So much is all we have to say about the smaller and typical form of this 
species originally discovered by Riippell. But about the larger subspecies of 
Northern Somaliland, which has been named berberana by Herr Matschie, 
we are able to give greater details from information supplied by the many 
naturalists and sportsmen who have of late years visited the country which it 
inhabits. Although it does not appear that there is any discontinuity 
between the ranges of these two forms, and it is quite likely that inter- 
mediate specimens may occur where the two forms meet, we cannot but 
allow that Herr Matschie was justified im assigning a subspecific name to the 
Southern form. Not only is the latter a larger and finer animal with longer 
horns, but the curvature of its horns is, as we have already pointed out, so 
different that, so far as our experience goes, there can be no difficulty in 
distinguishing the two forms by this character alone. 
Capt H. G. C. Swayne, R.E., in his ‘Seventeen Expeditions to Somali- 
land,’ writes thus of Gazella soemmerringi:— 
“Five years ago, when I was staying in the quarters at Bulhar, the Aouwl could be 
seen from the bungalow grazing out on the plain. The Bulhar Maritime Plain used to 
be full of them, but they have been so persecuted by sportsmen that they have now 
retired to some distance. 
“The Aoul weighs about the same as the Gerenuk, but has a shorter neck and a 
more clumsy-looking head, and is altogether a coarser animal. It is a grass-feeder, 
and lives in the open plains or in scattered bush, and never in thick jungle, and prefers 
tolerably flat ground. The white hind-quarters can be seen from a great distance, 
making a herd of Aoul look like a flock of sheep in the haze of the plains. I have 
never seen them in the cedar-forests on the top of Golis, but in the hartebeest-ground to 
the south they are common. They are often met with in large herds along with the 
hartebeests, and are very common all over the Haud and Ogadén and near the Webbe. 
“ They are, I think, the most stupid and easy to shoot of all the Somali Antelopes, 
and their habits are identical with those of the Indian Blackbuck, but they are not 
equal to it in beauty and grace of movement. doul often make long and high jumps 
when going away, presumably to look over the backs of the others; they look some- 
thing like specimens of the Cape Springbuck which I have seen in England. I have 
never observed them spring vertically to a great height, as the Indian Blackbuck does. 
They are inquisitive like the Hartebeests, and will follow a caravan in the open, and if 
fired at they make off across the front, stretching themselves out at racing speed, and 
drawing up in a troop now and then to gaze.” 
Captain R. H. Light, of the Indian Staff Corps, who visited Somaliland in 
1891, and has kindly furnished us with some field-notes on its Antelopes, 
