WATERBUCKS AND REEDBUCKS 
495 
Nile Defassa Waterbuck 
Kobus defassa harnieri 
Native Names: Dinka, katambur; Bongo, booboo; Bari, babu. 
Kobus harnieri Murie, 1867, Proc. Zool. Soc., p. 3; colored figure and two 
text figures. 
Range. —White Nile district east to the foot of the 
Abyssinian highlands, south as far as the Albert Nyanza and 
westward throughout the Bahr-el-Ghazal watershed. 
Doctor Murie in a communication to the Zoological 
Society in 1867, concerning the travels of Baron Wilhelm 
von Harnier on the White Nile, quotes Kaup as the authority 
for the present race, based upon the two heads presented by 
Harnier to the Darmstadt Museum. We have, however, 
no further published record of Kaup’s name for which 
Murie must now stand as the only authority. Harnier lost 
his life in the upper Nile district in attempting to rescue his 
native gun-bearer from the charge of a wounded buffalo. At 
the time of this catastrophe he was shooting near a Catho¬ 
lic mission station some distance south of Shambe between 
6° and 7 0 N. latitude, and it was from this locality presum¬ 
ably that the waterbuck named for him were obtained. 
The Nile race of the defassa may be distinguished by its 
short thin coat of hair, by the drab or hair-brown colora¬ 
tion which is without cinnamon suffusion on the body, and 
by its smaller body size and horns. It closely resembles 
the Uganda defassa, in color and shortness of coat, but may 
be recognized by its smaller body and shorter horns. The 
typical race from Abyssinia has a decidedly cinnamon or 
even rufous tinge to its coloration and has much longer and 
more abundant hair. A newly born young secured at 
Rhino Camp is covered with woolly hair, rather short and 
thick, of a uniform dusky-drab, but darker on the breast 
and the throat. The white patch on the hinder surface of the 
hind quarters is not evident, owing to the brown of the sides 
spreading over this area and merging with the grayish-white 
of the inner surface and belly. The legs are slightly lighter 
than the sides. The markings on the head and the neck 
resemble those of the adult, but the dark snout patch is re¬ 
stricted to a spot near the muzzle. 
