THE BUSHBUGKS 
T HE bushbucks, amongst which may be included the beautiful 
Inyala antelope of South-East Africa, are, as their name implies, 
inhabitants of bush or forest covered regions; but I think that 
the near proximity of water is also necessary to them, and 
throughout Africa, south of the Sahara, wherever these two 
conditions co-exist, one or other of the many geographical races 
into which the bushbucks have been divided may be confidently looked for. 
Their range is enormous, and they are found at all altitudes, from the 
sea coast to a height of 10,000 or 12,000 feet above sea-level. Leaving the 
inyala out of account, there is an extraordinary amount of difference in the 
outward coloration of the various geographical races of the smaller bush- 
bucks; but in many cases it can be shown that two apparently distinct 
species are connected by many intervening forms. For instance, in outward 
appearance the large blackish -brown and almost spotless male bushbuck, 
which is found in the deep, thickly -wooded ravines and kloofs of the Cape 
Colony, is a very different looking animal from the smaller and far more 
beautiful male bushbuck found on the Chobi River, which is a rich red- 
brown in ground colour, profusely banded and spotted with white. Yet I 
cannot but think that if a very large number of skins of male bushbucks 
were collected from every part of the range of these animals from the Cape 
Colony to the Chobi River, the two extreme forms would be found to 
grade into one another by such infinitesimal degrees that it would be 
impossible to say where the one species ended and the other began. At 
any rate, all the bushbucks I have shot in South-East Africa, and on the 
Lower and Central Zambesi and its tributaries, as also on the Limpopo, 
have all been intermediate forms between the very dark and almost spot- 
less species of bushbuck and the red-brown race, profusely spotted and 
banded with white. The coloration of bushbucks seems to depend to a 
considerable extent on their environment, as where these antelopes live 
in very dense bush, and where the climate is moist, as in the dark ravines 
near the sea-coast of the Cape Colony, and in the great forests on the 
Mau escarpment, and the Aberdare range in East Africa, the male bush- 
bucks are very dark in colour, with very few and very small white spots on 
any part of the body; whilst in the more open forests and drier climate of 
Northern Mashonaland and the neighbourhood of the Chobi River, they 
are redder in ground colour and striped and spotted with white in varying 
118 
