The book of antelopes, vol. 1 (of 4)Sclater, Philip Lutley
Science
The book of antelopes, vol. 1 (of 4)
Sclater, Philip Lutley
Antelopes
The first recorded specimen of Coke’s Hartebeest was a frontlet
obtained by the German traveller Von der Decken in 1862 at Lake Jipe
in Masailand. These horns were referred by Peters, in his account of
the mammals of Von der Decken’s expedition, to _B. caama_ of the
Cape. But Sir Victor Brooke, who subsequently examined them at Berlin,
as we know from his MSS., was convinced of their distinctness from
the species of the Cape Colony, and had determined to call the new
species after Von der Decken, although he never published the name. The
subjoined figures (4 _a_ and 4 _b_) were prepared under Sir
Victor Brooke’s direction, and show a front view and a three-quarter
view of these horns.
[Illustration: Fig. 4 _a_.
Horns of _Bubalis cokei_, front view.]
In June 1880 Col. the Hon. W. C. W. Coke, F.Z.S., a renowned English
sportsman, started from Zanzibar on a shooting-expedition towards
Mpapwa, along the caravan-route from the port of Saadani. On reaching
the open plains on the plateau of Usagara he met with several herds of
this Antelope, and obtained the frontlet (fig. 4 _c_), now in the
British Museum, upon which the species was established by Dr. Günther.
Colonel Coke has kindly permitted us to refer to his journal, in which
we find it recorded that he first met with this Hartebeest on June
28th, between the Missionary Stations of Mamboia and Mpapwa. On July
10th, when encamped near M’lalli, at the edge of the plains, though
sick with fever, he went out and shot the animal, upon the head of
which the species was afterwards based. After this Colonel Coke was
taken so ill that he had to be carried back to the coast in a hammock,
and was unable to shoot any more of these Antelopes.
In Sir John Kirk’s collection are two fine heads of this Hartebeest,
likewise obtained by him in Usagara.
Proceeding northwards to the country round Kilimanjaro we find that
Mr. H. C. V. Hunter, in his appendix to Sir John Willoughby’s ‘East
Africa and its Big Game,’ records Coke’s Hartebeest as, at the date
of his visit (1887), “quite the most common Antelope in the plains”
of that district, “being found everywhere in immense herds.” From the
same part of the British East-African Company’s territory we have seen
and examined numerous other heads of this Hartebeest, including fine
examples of both sexes belonging to Consul-General Holmwood, obtained
during a shooting-excursion from Zanzibar to this attractive district.
[Illustration: Fig. 4 _b_.
Horns of _Bubalis cokei_, side view.]
Mr. Ernest Gedge, who traversed British East Africa in company with Mr.
F. J. Jackson, has kindly compiled from his note-books the following
account of his experiences with Coke’s Hartebeest:--
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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