BRITISH CENTRAL AFRICA 
appears to be confined to the vicinity of Lake Chilwa and to the Elephant Marsh 
is the least differentiated of all the gnus and bears more signs of relationship 
to certain forms of hartebeest. 
The position and origin of the gnu in the classification of the antelopes has 
always been a difficult one for naturalists to settle. It is obviously a very 
specialised animal and yet in some respects it retains more primitive charac¬ 
teristics than the hartebeest. For instance, the female has four mamma, whereas 
in the hartebeests there are only two. Also the length of the head is not so 
disproportionately great as in the hartebeest though it possesses a peculiar 
across the ridge of the nose just below the line of the eyes. This white mark had become somewhat 
effaced in the dry skin which we sent home, and its extent and direction were not sufficiently realised by 
the artist who drew the picture for the Zoological Society’s Proceedings. Mr. Harrison’s photograph is 
important, therefore, as showing the proper direction taken by the white marking of the face and the clear¬ 
ness of this marking which has a definite outline, and is not hazy as represented in the Zoological Society’s 
plate. The presence of this white mark across the face, together with other peculiarities, almost constitutes 
the gnu of Nyasaland a different species to the Blue Wildebeests of South and East Africa. If this is the 
case it will be another curious instance of the closer relationship in mammalian types which subsists 
between North-East and South Africa as compared to South-Central Africa. It will be a parallel to the 
eland and the zebra. 
1 Though the existence of a gnu is reported from the Luangwa Valley, west of the Protectorate. 
