THE GUN AT HOME AND ABROAD 
Wherever the rinderpest passed through Africa towards the end of last 
century, bushbucks suffered cruelly from the terrible visitation, but it is 
believed that in almost every part of their range they have now once more 
become numerous. 
In all, fifteen species or local races of bushbucks have been recognized 
by English, German, Swedish or American naturalists. How many of 
these local races are worthy of full specific rank I do not know, but I am 
quite sure that between the typical bushbuck of West Africa ( Tragelaphus 
scriptus [i typicus ]), which is of a general bright rufous-brown colour, 
profusely striped and spotted with white, and the bushbuck of the Cape 
Colony ( Tragelaphus sylvaticus ), in which the male is almost black, with 
only two or three small white spots on the haunch, there are a vast number 
of intermediate forms grading imperceptibly the one into the other. In 
the males of most of the bushbucks there is a sort of collar round the 
neck several inches wide, almost devoid of hair, but on the Nile, as well as 
in Somaliland and Abyssinia, bushbucks are found in which the neck of 
the male is covered all over with a normal growth of hair. A few years 
ago a male bushbuck was shot on a hill near Nyeri, in British East Africa, 
at a height of about 7,000 ft. above sea -level. This animal is said to have 
6hown no sign of a collar round the neck, devoid of hair, and has been 
accepted as a new species and named “ Hayward’s bushbuck,” after the 
gentleman by whom it was shot. This is very curious, as in 1910 a friend 
and I shot some bushbucks only a few miles away from this isolated hill 
near Nyeri, and they showed the usual bare ring or collar round the neck. 
I have also shot male bushbucks near Ravine Station, and on the Lower 
Gwas N’yiro River, in British East Africa, and in every case they showed 
the collar or ring round the neck, devoid of hair. 
