The book of antelopes, vol. 1 (of 4)Sclater, Philip Lutley
Science
The book of antelopes, vol. 1 (of 4)
Sclater, Philip Lutley
Antelopes
Size rather smaller than that of the Korrigum. General colour purplish
red; the face, a line beneath the eye, another along the nape and back
brown or black; front of the limbs and tip of the tail deep black.
Skull with a comparatively short nasal region, the nasal bones
themselves unusually short and broad. Measurements (♀):--basal length
13·8 inches, greatest breadth 5·75, muzzle to eye 10·2.
Horns as in the Korrigum; those of a female 20·5 inches in length over
the curve.
The colour-characters above given are taken from Heuglin’s description
and figure, as no skin has been seen by us. A skull obtained by Consul
Petherick on the Bahr-el-Ghazal has, however, furnished the cranial
dimensions.
_Hab._ Sennaar, Kordofan, and Bahr-el-Ghazal.
The Tiang, as the well-known German traveller and naturalist Theodor
von Heuglin proposed to call this Antelope, after its native name, is
a representative form of the Korrigum in the upper valley of the Nile,
and, so far as we are acquainted with it at present, agrees in all
essential respects with its West-African ally, except in its slightly
smaller bulk, and some differences in the black markings on the face
and limbs. The Tiang, Topi, and Korrigum have been until lately
generally regarded as conspecific; but in 1892 Herr Paul Matschie, of
the Royal Natural History Museum of Berlin, came to the conclusion
that previous authors had been in error in uniting the present animal
and its allied forms of West and East Africa respectively under one
head, and that they should be distinguished as different species. We
follow Herr Matschie’s lead on this question, and have little doubt
that his views will ultimately prove to be correct, although, from
the great scarcity of specimens of all these Antelopes in European
collections, it is not possible at present to arrive at a positive
decision.
[Illustration: Fig. 8.
Skull of _Damaliscus tiang_, ♀.]
The Stockholm Museum appears to have been the first to receive examples
of this Antelope; but Sundevall referred them first of all to the
Sassaby (_Bubalis lunata_), and, when he found that this was quite
wrong, named them _Bubalis koba_, supposing them to be identical
with the West-African Korrigum. Sundevall’s specimens were received
from Sennaar, and are accurately described in his classical memoir on
the “Pecora.”
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