THE MOUNTAIN INYALA 
TRAGELAPHUS BUXTONI 
T HE old saying, “ Semper aliquid novi ex Africa ” (“ There is 
always something new coming from Africa ”), still holds good, 
or, at any rate, did so up to the year 1910, when two young 
English sportsmen — Mr Ivor Buxton and Mr M. C. Albright — 
brought home to this country several specimens of an entirely 
new and very interesting species of antelope which they had 
met with and shot on the Arusi plateau of Gallaland, in Southern 
Abyssinia. 
As no other European besides these two young sportsmen had up to that 
time ever seen one of these antelopes, and as all the specimens obtained 
by them seem to have been members of one herd, very little is as yet 
known about their habits; but they apparently live in a mountainous 
region at an altitude of some 9,000 feet above the sea, on stony hillsides, 
where the ground is either open or but sparsely covered with low scrub 
and rough grass. 
The type specimen of this new antelope, which was presented by Mr 
Buxton to the British Museum, stands, as mounted, four feet four and a 
half inches at the withers. To most people it would, I think, appear to 
present greater affinity to the koodoo than to any antelope of the nearly- 
allied bushbuck group; but the well-known zoologist, Mr R. Lydekker, by 
whom it was first described, considers that it is more closely allied to 
the latter genus of antelopes than to the former, and has therefore given 
it the name of “ Mountain Xnyala ” ( Tragelaphus buxtoni). 
117 
