THE OKAPI 
cunning forest dwarfs, armed with bows and deadly poisoned arrows, 
have taken toll of these, as of all other animals which came within 
their ken, but they did not specially value or chiefly hunt the okapi. Now, 
however, that a price has been set upon the head of this curious survival 
from a remote period of the world’s history, the dwarfs, it is to be feared, 
will hunt it systematically, and as it does not seem to be anywhere 
numerous, and its range is limited, its complete extinction may possibly 
not be long delayed. 
From a sporting point of view, the okapi is not at all an attractive animal. 
It is only to be found in districts where the climate is deadly to Europeans, 
and appears to be so abnormally shy that, although the light is said to be 
always bad in the gloom of the forests it frequents, it only leaves their 
deepest recesses to feed during the night, and if still found feeding after 
daylight and approached to within a distance of a few yards, it may yet 
remain invisible amongst thick foliage. This seems to have been the 
experience of all British and other European sportsmen who have en- 
deavoured to shoot a specimen of this elusive animal. Jose Lopez, the 
resourceful Portuguese servant of the late Captain Boyd Alexander, after 
having discovered the feeding -ground of an okapi and vainly endeavoured 
to get a shot at it, found by examining its tracks that it always left the 
thick -leaved water-plants on which it was accustomed to browse under 
cover of thick bush, and then made its way back to the recesses of the 
forest, along a route which passed between two large trees. Here, therefore, 
he had a pit dug, which was carefully covered over and concealed, and in 
this pit before long he entrapped a fine male okapi, which is now in the 
collection of the British Museum. Josfc Lopez, therefore, saw this okapi 
alive in the pitfall, and killed and skinned it himself, and up till to-day he 
is, I believe, the only human being other than a Congo forest dwarf who 
has ever killed one of these animals. Photographs of a living fawn of an 
okapi were, however, taken by an official of the Congo Free State at 
Bambili in that province, and exhibited at the meeting of the British 
Association in 1907. 
But little seems as yet to be known of the life history of the okapi, 
but, according to native reports, it seems to be the most solitary of all 
ruminants, both males and females living for the most part alone, and 
only consorting together during the pairing season. 
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