THE CAPE HARTEBEEST 
one particular pair of Cape hartebeest horns and those of one particular 
Lelwel, or Jackson’s hartebeest, if a large series of each were brought 
together and the two series were then mixed, no British, German, or 
American naturalist would ever be able to separate them again unless the 
locality from which each skull had come had been previously marked on 
it. If, as I think will eventually prove to be the case, intervening forms 
should eventually be discovered connecting the West African hartebeest 
with the Lelwel, the probability is, I think, that all the species of harte- 
beests with horns which grow more or less upright and then crook sharply 
backwards — the Bubal, West African, Lelwel (with all its sub -races), 
and the Cape hartebeests, are descended from one common ancestor, 
which entered Africa in Pliocene or Pleistocene times from Southern 
Europe, whilst the ancestor of all the broad-horned hartebeests — the 
Tora, Swayne’s, Coke’s and Neumann’s — came from Southern Asia, as 
did probably the ancestor of the aberrant Lichtenstein’s hartebeest. 
The Cape hartebeest is of a darker colour than any of its northern rela- 
tives, being of a rich ruddy brown on the back, neck and sides, with a 
patch of light yellow on the rump. There are also purplish -coloured 
patches on the shoulders and thighs, and a black blaze down the front of 
the face. The tail is black and more bushy than in any other species of 
hartebeest with which I am acquainted. The face is very long, as in the 
Lelwel hartebeest, as is the pedicle on which the horns stand. These are 
similar in size and shape to the horns of the Lelwel hartebeest, and may 
reach a length of 25 or 26 in., though anything over 23 in. is rare. 
In former days, no doubt, the Cape hartebeest ranged over the open 
plains of the Orange Free State and the South-Western Transvaal, but in 
my own experience I have never met with it anywhere except in bush 
country, or in the near neighbourhood of bush country, such as the open 
ground near the great salt pans in the northern part of Khama’s country. 
I have usually found Cape hartebeests living in small herds of from five or 
six to fifteen or twenty, but I have seen as many as fifty together. The 
bulls, both old and in the prime of life, are often met with alone, and I 
once found a bull hartebeest and a bull tsessebe living together. From my 
own experience, I should say that if the first Boers who hunted Bubalis 
cama with flint lock guns gave it the name of hartebeest because they 
found it a very hard beast to kill, they had every justification for doing so, 
for it is certainly very tenacious of life. Whether the Cape hartebeest can 
be classed amongst the true desert animals, which can live not only without 
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