COMMON ZEBRA OR BONTE-QUAGGA 681 
the forests or thick, wet bush. There were none on the cold, 
well-watered slopes of Kenia, with their thick growth of 
bush grass. They were not abundant in any of the regions 
fitted for a thick, agricultural population. The country 
which they most affected was like our own Western ranch 
country: the grass grew thick and fairly high on it for a 
short period after the rains, but during most of the time 
it was dry, and the grass withered and short; the trees were 
acacias or euphorbias, or on the lower grounds palms. 
Few things are more interesting or puzzling to the natu¬ 
ralist in East Africa than the distribution of the various big 
animals. The limits of the range of many species seem in 
our eyes purely arbitrary, uninfluenced by any physical 
barriers; doubtless there is an explanation, but it has not 
yet been discovered. In most places the big and the small 
gazelles are found in abundance on the same plains, but, 
although there seems no change in the country, except that 
the altitude is lower, the small gazelles are not found north¬ 
ward along the Northern Guaso Nyiro, where one form of 
the big gazelle abounds. The wildebeest abounds in the 
Sotik and on the Athi and Kapiti Plains, but is not found 
along the Northern Guaso Nyiro. The hartebeests are the 
most abundant big mammals throughout their range; one 
species, the Coke, is the commonest game of the Sotik and 
the Athi, another, the Jackson, the commonest game in the 
’Nzoia country, neither intruding on the range of the other, 
and both being absent from the Northern Guaso Nyiro, 
where the oryx is common; and in this case the explana¬ 
tion of altitude, which can be given as regards the small 
gazelle, does not apply, for hartebeests are found on the 
Nile where the altitude is the same as that of the Northern 
