160 
SAVAGE SUDAN 
and in the Sudan are, within my experience, honestly and 
honourably fulfilled by visiting- sportsmen. But there 
are exceptions. What wealth of detail—amusing or 
lamentable—must have accumulated, locked away in 
the breasts of Colonial Governors and Game-Super¬ 
intendents !—the excuses, specious or otherwise, the 
. . . ? Any offender, whether wittingly or unwittingly, 
may rest assured that he will need to be some points 
better than a super-Ananias, if he rely for escape 
upon anything beyond the simple naked truth. 
A NOTE ON NOMENCLATURE 
With Special Reference to the Nile Lechwi 
(ONOTRAGUS MEGACEROS) 
That an animal so distinct and so highly specialised as the 
Nile lechwi should for half a century have figured under a 
false name—or, in Roosevelt’s phrase, been “cursed with the 
silly misnomer of ‘Mrs Gray’s waterbuck’ (Cobus maria )”— 
casts a sinister sidelight on the system of zoological nomen¬ 
clature. To begin with, in my view, such a name is bad equally 
in fact and in grammar, since by grammatic axiom (though 
not otherwise) “ the male is more worthy.” 
Since most laymen naturally conclude that some “ Mrs Gray ” 
must have had a hand in the discovery of this antelope, a 
short review of the facts becomes appropriate. 
The existence of this Sudan marsh-buck was first made 
known to science by an Austrian explorer, von Heuglin, who 
in 1855 brought to Vienna seven complete specimens, including 
one living female. Having named his discovery Adenota 
megaceros (a definition which, although wrong, was not so 
very far wrong after all), von Heuglin, neglecting the red- 
tape of scientific formulae, hurried back to Africa. Four years 
later, in 1859, our great British Consul at Khartoum, John 
Petherick, sent home a couple of lechwi skulls with masks. 
From these paltry fragments the then Curator of the British 
Museum (Dr Gray), ignoring the prior discovery by von 
Heuglin, hastily and unwarrantably jumped to totally false 
