The book of antelopes, vol. 1 (of 4)Sclater, Philip Lutley
Science
The book of antelopes, vol. 1 (of 4)
Sclater, Philip Lutley
Antelopes
“We had hardly ridden half a mile when I perceived a fine bull Tétel
standing near a bush a few hundred yards distant. Motioning to the
party to halt I dismounted, and with the little Fletcher rifle I
endeavoured to obtain a shot. When within about a hundred and seventy
yards he observed our party, and I was obliged to take the shot,
although I could have approached unseen to a closer distance had his
attention not been attracted by the noise of the horses. He threw his
head up preparatory to starting off, and he was just upon the move as
I touched the trigger. He fell like a stone to the shot, but almost
immediately he regained his feet and bounded off, receiving a bullet
from the second barrel without a flinch; in full speed he rushed away
across the party of aggageers about three hundred yards distant. Out
dashed Abou Do from the ranks on his active grey horse, and away he
flew after the wounded Tétel, his long hair floating in the wind, his
naked sword in hand, and his heels digging into the flanks of his
horse, as though armed with spurs in the last finish of a race. It
was a beautiful course; Abou Do hunted like a cunning greyhound; the
Tétel turned, and taking advantage of the double, he cut off the angle;
succeeding by the manœuvre, he again followed at tremendous speed over
the numerous inequalities of the ground, gaining in the race until he
was within twenty yards of the Tétel, when we lost sight of both game
and hunter in the thick bushes. By this time I had regained my horse,
that was brought to meet me, and I followed to the spot, towards which
my wife and the aggageers encumbered with the unwilling apes were
already hastening. Upon arrival I found, in high yellow grass beneath
a large tree, the Tétel dead, and Abou Do wiping his bloody sword,
surrounded by the foremost of the party. He had hamstrung the animal so
delicately that the keen edge of the blade was not injured against the
bone. My two bullets had passed through the Tétel: the first was too
high, having entered above the shoulder--this had dropped the animal
for a moment; the second was through the flank.”
As we have already stated, both Heuglin and Baker confounded the Tora
with the Bubal. In 1873 the British Museum first received specimens of
this Antelope from the Bogos district west of Massowa. The keen eye of
the then keeper of the Zoological Department quickly recognized the
essential differences of the new species from the previously known
members of the genus, and it was briefly described, first in ‘Nature’
and afterwards in the ‘Annals of Natural History.’
[Illustration: Fig. 2.
Head of _Bubalis tora_.
(P. Z. S. 1873, p. 762.)]
In December of the same year Sclater exhibited a mounted head of this
Antelope at one of the meetings of the Zoological Society, from whose
‘Proceedings’ the accompanying figure of the specimen in question (fig.
2) has been borrowed by leave of the Publication Committee.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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