THE GUN AT HOME AND ABROAD 
south-west of Mount Kenia. This sub-species or local race has been 
named by the American zoologist, Hollister, Oryx beisa annectens , to signify 
its intermediate character between the two well-defined species Oryx beisa 
and Oryx callotis. 
When travelling in East Africa in 1910 I had the opportunity of ex- 
amining four animals of this local race, which a friend and I shot on the 
Sungari -rongai River, and in their face -markings, except that the dark 
patch beneath the horns was joined by a narrow band of the same colour 
to the dark patch on the nose, as in Oryx beisa , they agreed exactly with 
the description given of Oryx callotis by Messrs Sclater and Thomas in 
their book on the African antelopes. In all cases, too, their horns were 
shorter than is usually the case with Oryx beisa , and in this respect they 
again more nearly resembled Oryx callotis. Their ears were neither so 
long nor so fully tufted as in the latter species, but in one specimen, a 
cow, the tufts were quite well developed. In general colour they were not 
so red as in the typical Oryx callotis, though in this respect they varied, as 
in the female aforementioned, in which the ears were well tufted; the 
ground colour of the face was of a pinky fawn. 
Curiously enough, this intermediate race of East African oryx is 
separated from the nearest point of the range of the fringe -eared species 
by some hundreds of miles of country in which there are no oryx at all 
of any kind; whilst northwards from the Sungari -rongai River to the west 
of Mount Kenia, where I obtained my specimens of 0. b. annectens , oryx 
are met with continuously all along the Guaso Narok, and the Guaso 
Nyiro Rivers to the Lorian swamp, and from thence without a break in 
their range to Lake Rudolph, Abyssinia and Somaliland. In these latter 
countries there is only one species of oryx, and that is the true beisa , and 
it would certainly seem as if at some not very distant time a certain number 
of fringe -eared oryx must have wandered northwards beyond their usual 
habitat until they reached the most southerly country ranged over by 
oryx beisa , on the confines of which the two species have interbred. It 
would be amongst the most southerly herds that one would expect to find 
the strongest evidence of an admixture of oryx callotis blood, and this, I 
think, is, in fact, the case. Certainly, on the Lower Guaso Nyiro River, 
near the Lorian swamp, the average horn length is much greater than 
amongst the oryx on the Laikipia plateau, and all the oryx we shot there 
in 1912 appeared to be true oryx beisa. 
In habits the various species of oryx found in East Africa appear to be 
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