154 
SAVAGE SUDAN 
secret!) points to this marsh-buck being quite plentiful 
locally; and with that, my own experience tallies. Whether 
one may happen in a season to see many or few is largely 
a matter of luck. 
Already I have devoted what (I gravely fear) may 
appear quite tiresome space to the mere zoology of a 
single animal. My excuse—and apology—is that the 
generic status of the Nile lechwi has never before been 
correctly aligned in any British work. Should, however, 
my feeble statement of the case (see Appendix, infra ) be 
held to fall short of proof, then let me refer to an exact 
analogue in South 
Africa. There, on the 
Zambesi, are also found 
living alongside each 
other and in precisely 
parallel circumstance, 
a lechwi (Onotragus 
lechee) and also a cob 
(Adenota vardoni ), just 
as we find their counter¬ 
parts here on the White 
Nile. But while, in either habitat, the two forms are 
constantly found within half a mile of each other, yet never 
do they come in contact. The swamp-loving lechwi grazes 
girth-deep ; the other as invariably avoids wetting its feet! 1 
The saddleback I have entitled a First Prize of Sudan ; 
nevertheless I had excluded its capture from my personal 
programme and ambitions therein. There comes a period 
in life when it behoves to economise physical powers, or 
at least to avoid squandering them on doubtful emprise; 
and the terror of those Nilotic swamps prevailed. I struck 
the coveted saddleback off my schedule. But dis aliter 
visum . 
1 See Selous’ notes on these two Zambesi antelopes, both in his own 
work A Hunter's Wanderings , and also in his contribution to Rowland 
Ward’s Great and Small Game of Africa, particularly at pp. 300-1, 
