130 
SAVAGE SUDAN 
is practically impossible to reproduce this effect. 1 
Shoulder-height 48 inches ; horns 28J inches in length, 
with a spread of 24 inches between tips. The animal 
would scale about 500 lb., and we left our savage friends 
revelling in a barbaric feast. Several, nevertheless, 
courteously escorted us back to our ship. 
This rufous phase of the waterbuck is quite exceptional 
in the Sudan. Subsequently, in the Nuer country, further 
up White Nile, I shot a second example—a “lone bull” 
accompanying a troop of cob—and recognised the variety 
on one other occasion—that is, thrice in all—amidst the 
many hundreds of dark-brown or iron-grey waterbucks 
met with; nor do the two colour-phases intermingle. 
These few rufous examples are merely colour-varieties— 
a sort of erythrism of the common iron-grey waterbuck 
of northern Africa ( Cobus defasset). They have been 
recorded from Abyssinia and southern Somaliland, and 
I have seen three shot on the upper Dinder River. 
If it be permissible to hazard an impression, I would 
suggest that these rufous waterbucks may originate in 
West Africa—in Senegal, the Gambia, etc.-—whence 
they spread across the continent in a thin horizontal 
line, west to east, bisecting the north-and-south range 
of the ordinary iron-grey waterbucks in the basin of 
Upper White Nile, where I met with them as above. 
On returning home I offered one of my tawny water- 
bucks to the British Museum, and subsequently the late 
Mr R. Lydekker wrote me:—“ Your specimens strengthen 
my idea that most of these so-called races are nothing 
more than individual herds.” Would that systematists 
and scientific nomenclators would consistently and con- 
1 No sort of blame is implied or imputed to our taxidermists. Human 
skill is incapable of restoring that careless grace which long loose layers of 
shaggy hair naturally assume in life ; that is, when once the thick hide 
upon which they grew has been dried hard as a board. This remark 
applies to all the rough-haired antelopes—in Sudan, for example, to the 
roan with its arched and immensely bushy neck ; also to the goat-like 
beard and neck-ruff of the saddle-backed lechwi (Onotragus megaceros). 
