LICHTENSTEIN’S HARTEBEEST 
BUBALIS LICHTENSTEINI 
L ICHTENSTEIN’S hartebeest, which was so named by the German 
naturalist, Dr Peters, after his countryman, Dr Lichtenstein, 
who travelled extensively in South Africa in the early nineteenth 
century, differs so much from all other species of the genus that 
the ancestor from which it is descended had probably already 
become differentiated from its nearest ally, the ancestor of the 
various species of wide-horned hartebeests, before either had left their 
original homes in Southern Asia. As Lichtenstein’s hartebeest to-day has 
a more southerly range than any of ]the wide-horned species, possibly its 
ancestor was the first to enter Africa from the north-east, though the 
ancestors of the upright -horned hartebeests which probably came from 
Southern Europe and entered Africa to the west of the Nile, and subse- 
quently spread to the Cape, may have been even earlier immigrants. 
Lichtenstein’s hartebeest is a large, heavy animal, standing over fifty 
inches at the shoulder. In fully adult specimens of both sexes the shoulders, 
back and upper part of the neck and sides are of a very rich, dark chestnut 
red colour, the head, together with the lower portions of the neck and 
sides, being yellow. There is a patch of pale yellow on the rump, which is 
very conspicuous when the animal is running, and the insides of the thighs 
and belly are also pale yellow. The upper part of the tail, the chin, and 
knees, and the fronts of both fore and hind legs are black. In both an adult 
male and a female which I shot in 1877, in the country to the south of 
Broken Hill, in what is now known as North-Western Rhodesia, there was 
a patch of purplish grey, about six inches in diameter, a hand’s breadth 
behind each shoulder. In other specimens I shot in the same district these 
grey patches were absent, as they were also in all those I shot near the 
Sabi River, or in Portuguese East Africa. 
The horns in Lichtenstein’s hartebeest do not stand on a raised pedicle, 
and are broad and flat at the base, and unridged. They grow straight up 
from the head and converge before crooking sharply backwards. The 
backward -growing points are sometimes parallel, sometimes turn in- 
wards, and at others sharply outwards. 
On the eastern side of Africa, Lichtenstein’s hartebeest ranges into 
German East Africa, and is also found all over British Central Africa and 
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