CHAPTER XV 
SOME NATURAL HISTORY IN WHICH IT IS REVEALED 
THAT A SING-SING WATERBUCK IS NOT A SING¬ 
ING TOPI, AND THAT A TOPI IS NOT A SPE¬ 
CIES OF HEAD-DRESS 
While reading an account of the trophies secured 
by Colonel Roosevelt on the Guas Ngishu Plateau, 
I was mystified by seeing the name of an animal 
I had never heard tell of—a singing topi. For a 
time I puzzled over this strange creature and finally 
evolved a satisfactory explanation of how the ani¬ 
mal made its appearance in the despatches. Briefly, 
“there haint no sich animal,” as the old farmer said 
when he saw his first dromedary in a circus; it was 
merely a mistake, due to the telegraphic abbrevia¬ 
tions which foreign correspondents employ to save 
cable tolls. 
What the correspondent meant to say was that 
the colonel had secured a sing-sing waterbuck and 
a topi. The word “waterbuck” was omitted because 
he assumed that everybody at home would know 
that a “sing-sing” was a species of waterbuck, 
wherein he was mistaken, for comparatively few 
people in America know what a sing-sing is, or, for 
that matter, what a topi is, or what a Uganda cob is. 
When his despatch had been transmitted through 
251 
