BUSHBUCKS, KOODOOS, AND ELANDS 471 
ticated; they would give excellent food; they could be used 
as draught-animals; and lack of water and the dire fly- 
borne cattle diseases of Africa would have no terror for them. 
They would be a great addition to the world’s stock of 
domestic animals. 
Where we came across eland they were drinking every 
twenty-four hours. But there seems to be no reason to 
doubt the fact that in certain desert regions eland, like 
giraffe and oryx, go many months without water. How this 
is possible for so huge and fat a beast, in a climate of such 
intolerable dryness and heat, we cannot imagine. No prob¬ 
lem is better worth the study of competent field naturalists. 
The eland, like the roan antelope, and the full-grown 
buck Grant gazelle, possesses a coat which harmonizes 
well with the general hue of the landscape in which it dwells. 
It lacks the bold face markings of the roan, and the face 
markings and body stripes of the oryx, and therefore, in 
spite of its size, is perhaps a trifle less conspicuous than either. 
The thin stripes on its coat have not the slightest effect in 
either concealing or revealing it; seen sidewise, its body is 
neither more nor less conspicuous than the unstriped body 
of a roan antelope. On a bare plain or when coming to 
water all these and all other big antelope are conspicuous. 
In gray, dry thorn scrub the eland is sometimes hard to make 
out from a distance, if it is not switching its tail. But, as a 
matter of fact, it rarely stands still" for any length of time 
without switching its tail; the only elands we ever saw in 
what might be called forest, revealed themselves to us when a 
hundred yards off by the switching of their tails. We doubt 
whether the eland’s color is of even the smallest use to it as 
against its natural foes. As wild dogs always hunt purely by 
