The book of antelopes, vol. 2 (of 4)Sclater, Philip Lutley
Science
The book of antelopes, vol. 2 (of 4)
Sclater, Philip Lutley
Antelopes
Size comparatively large; height at withers about 36 inches. General
colour greyish fawn, very finely grizzled with brown. Head and neck
clearer fawn. Face-markings generally absent, but a brown patch on the
muzzle in some specimens, and on the crown between the ears in others;
chin white. Backs of ears pale fawn, not black-tipped; a whitish patch
at the base of the ears surrounding the auricular gland, which in
young specimens is covered with short velvety-white hairs, and in old
animals is entirely naked. Belly white. Fore legs generally black in
front, from the knee downwards, fawn externally and white internally;
hind legs also commonly marked with black on the lower part of the
cannon-bone, otherwise fawn, but on both fore and hind limbs the dark
markings are sometimes absent. Tail thick, bushy, reaching halfway to
the hocks; fawn above and all round the base, white below and at the
tip.
Horns evenly divergent, curved backwards and upwards; never strongly
hooked at their tips. At their bases the growing pad, which in other
species is absorbed at maturity, remains persistent throughout life as
a soft rounded swelling. In length the horns of the adults attain from
14 to 16 inches.
Skull-measurements of an adult male:--basal length 10·3 inches,
greatest breadth 4·7, muzzle to orbit 6·3.
_Female_ like the male, but without horns.
_Hab._ South Africa, as far north as Angola on the west,
and Mozambique on the east. (Whether _C. bohor_ is only
a smaller northern form of _C. arundinum_ is as yet
uncertain.)
The Reedbucks, although closely allied to the Waterbucks and hardly
to be distinguished from them in osteological characters, as has been
shown by Turner[11], are easily recognized externally by the forward
turn of their horns and by the naked glandular spot which is always
present to a greater or less extent on the sides of the head beneath
the ears. Of the five species of Reedbuck which we treat of in the
present work, three were known to the writers of the last century; but
they have been much confused together, even by some of the more recent
authorities, and it is a difficult task to unravel their complicated
synonymy.
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