WATERBUCKS AND REEDBUCKS 
483 
by Redunca. The genus Cervicapra founded by Sparrman 
in 1780 was based upon Antilope cervicapra , the common 
black buck of India. Smith a half century later founded 
the genus Redunca for the African reedbucks, basing it upon 
Pallas’s description of the Senegal species, Antilope redunca , 
and this term must now be employed for designating the 
genus instead of the more familiar term Cervicapra , which 
applies only to the Indian black buck. 
The dorsal coloration is uniform yellowish, but the legs in 
some races have a dark stripe in front. The size is medium, 
the height at the withers not exceeding three feet, and the 
tail is short and bushy. The short horns are curved forward 
sharply, and are ringed for at least half their length. The 
false hoofs are well developed. There is a rounded bare 
spot below the ear on the side of the head. The reedbuck 
is most closely allied to the rock reedbuck, but differs from it 
externally by much longer and more strongly hooked horns, 
by the shorter-haired tail, and larger body size. The sexes 
show some slight color differences, the female being marked 
by a dark blackish crown-patch which is absent in the adult 
male but present in the immature. The female almost 
equals the male in size, the difference in size of skulls being 
very little. The nursing young are longer-haired and much 
darker than the adults, being a uniform olive-drab grizzled 
by blackish on the upper parts with the dark leg stripes 
only present on the front of the pasterns, and the bare spot 
below the ear indicated by a growth of short white hair. 
The skull exhibits in comparison with Oreodorcas much 
larger nasal-lachrymal sinus and sphenoidal processes to the 
basioccipital, a longer snout having premaxillary bones 
which do not reach the nasals, and a smaller orbit. Two 
species are included in the genus; a large fulvous one, 
arundinum , inhabiting South Africa, and a smaller yel¬ 
lower species, redunca , inhabiting equatorial Africa. Reed¬ 
bucks range from Cape Colony northward through the 
East Coast drainage area to the Zambesi, where it spreads 
west to Angola and thence north throughout the whole 
extent of the continent as far as the southern borders of the 
Sahara Desert in Senegal, the Nile region, and northern 
Abyssinia. The only fossil species known is from the Pleis¬ 
tocene of Algeria. 
