ZOOLOGY 
3°9 
a half. 1 This aquatic Tragelaph further differs from the other members of the 
genus in having long, coarse, uniformly grey-coloured hair without white spots 
or stripes in the adult. The young are said to be faintly striped and spotted 
with white. 
There remains to be considered the Bushbuck of Central Africa. I am 
inclined to think that the naturalists are wrong in the classification of the Bush- 
bucks. They should restore to them that designation Tragelaphus silvaticus 
which was formerly applied to the Bushbuck of South-Central and East Africa, 
making it a separate species from Tragelaphus scriptus , the “ Harnessed 
Antelope” of West Africa. The coloration of the Bushbuck is usually uniform 
between South and East Africa and so different to that of the Harnessed 
Antelope that it is scarcely logical to class it as merely a variety of the latter. 
Besides which the horns of the Bushbuck are usually long 2 and more slender than 
those of the Harnessed antelope and offer a more distinct beginning of a second 
curve. The Bushbuck is extremely common throughout British Central Africa 
and is without exception the most delicious eating of any mammal in the world. 
In tenderness and flavour its flesh surpasses the best Welsh mutton, or any 
venison. Here, emphatically, is an animal which should be domesticated and 
saved from extinction. The young and the females of the Bushbuck are a 
bright yellow chestnut in colour, with well marked white spots and stripes, but 
the adult males become bluish grey, sepia and black, with the inner side of the 
legs white, a few white spots and one or two white stripes on the hind quarters, 
two white bars on the front of the throat and neck, and the usual tragelaphine 
white spots and stripe on the face. There is also a scattered white stripe down 
the line of the back. 
There now remains to be considered the great group of true antelopes, or 
ring-horned Bovidce, found in British Central Africa. 3 These are represented 
by the following antelopes :—One or more species of Duyker ( Cephalophiis) , the 
Oribi, Steinbok ( Raphicerus ), Klipspringer, Reedbuck, five species of Cobus, the 
Roan antelope, Sable antelope, Pallah, Lichtenstein’s Hartebeest, possibly the 
Tsessebe (. Damaliscus ), and the Blue Gnu. There should be one or more 
representatives of the little Livingstone’s Antelopes ( Nesotragus ), but no 
specimens have yet been obtained. 
The Duyker antelopes are neither so numerous in species nor in actual 
numbers as they are in South and West Africa. They frequent chiefly the 
low-lying plains in the vicinity of water courses. The Cephalophines are an 
interesting antelopine group to which is related the four-horned antelope of 
India. Although in regard to the modification of their toes by which all 
1 The kudu and the lesser kudu have three turns, the eland two turns and a half, the situtunga two 
turns, and the remainder of the African Tragelaphs one turn and a half, and the Nilgai of India only 
the beginning of a turn. 
3 A pair in my possession measures 17f- inches along the curve. 
3 There are certain families of mammals and of birds in the classification of which most naturalists, 
with the exception of the late Professor Garrod, seem to miss the meaning of a conjunction of charac¬ 
teristics and to fail to grasp true relationships, mistaking parallel developments for evidence of direct 
inter-connection. In no mammalian group has this persistence in error been more remarkable than in the 
arrangement of the Bovidce. That vague and facile term “ antelope” has been made to include at least 
two groups of hollow-horned ruminants which are only akin one to the other in that they can prove descent 
from a common ancestral type of hollow-horned ruminant. The term “antelope” should be reserved to 
the ring-horned ruminants and should include gazelles and all the African and Indian antelopes which 
have annulated horns. The goats and sheep and capricorns are nearly-allied sub-families. Another group 
of equal value is the Oxen, or Bovina, and a third similarly distinct, is the Tragelapliince , or Tragelaphs. 
The diagram on next page will show my idea of the right classification, arrangement and development of 
the Bovidce. It is based on ideas expressed many years ago by the late Professor Alfred Garrod. 
