572 
AFRICAN GAME ANIMALS 
closest inspection. We have in vain striven to find even 
minute inequalities on cliffs up which we have seen him 
easily make his way. He is, however, one of the smallest 
of the antelopes, so that he has little difficulty in carrying 
his weight on the tiny points of his stubby hoofs. The klip- 
springer has low withers, with full, rounded hind quarters, 
is short-legged, and has rather a heavily built appearance. 
He is abbreviated at both his extremities, being extremely 
short-necked, short-snouted, and short-tailed; indeed, the 
tail is a mere rudiment, not evident to the eye. In pelage 
he is strikingly peculiar among African antelopes. The hair 
is very coarse and pithy and closely resembles that of the 
American pronghorn and to a less degree the hair of the 
whitetail deer. 
The horns are short and parallel in direction, arising 
vertically above the orbits, and are ringed at the base. 
They are usually confined to the male sex, one race alone 
exhibiting horns in the female sex. There is no sexual dif¬ 
ference in coloration or size, nor is there any appreciable 
age difference in coloration, the young being minutely simi¬ 
lar to the adults in appearance. The genus to-day comprises 
a single species with several geographical races. One fossil 
species is known from the Pliocene of France. Klipspring- 
ers are confined to eastern Africa from the highlands of 
Abyssinia and the adjacent Red Sea coast south through the 
Rift Valley and coast drainage to the extreme southern tip 
of Africa. 
This lively and interesting little antelope is found on the 
rocky hills throughout East Africa. In the ordinary East 
African form the females have horns, in the desert form 
which occurs from the Northern Guaso Nyiro northward the 
females are hornless. It is an extraordinary climber and 
jumper, bounding among the cliffs with absolute sure-footed- 
ness. The tiny hoofs—which, like the brittle hair, are unlike 
those of any other African antelope—enable it to perch on 
the smallest pinnacle, and to climb by means of the most 
trifling cracks and irregularities in a rock surface; and it will 
