The book of antelopes, vol. 2 (of 4)Sclater, Philip Lutley
Science
The book of antelopes, vol. 2 (of 4)
Sclater, Philip Lutley
Antelopes
Proceeding northwards to German East Africa we find _Cobus
ellipsiprymnus_ included in Matschie’s volume on the Mammals of that
colony. Herr Neumann has transmitted specimens to Berlin from Tanga,
and Herr von Höhnel is given as an authority for its occurrence on
the Pangani. Speke also met with it in Uzaramo, where it was numerous
in the jungles along the Kingani River. In British East Africa, as
we are told by Mr. Jackson, the Waterbuck is common everywhere south
of Lake Baringo near fresh water, and is also found on many of the
saltwater creeks on the coast. It is particularly plentiful on the
banks of the Tana River, and in the Kilimanjaro district, where Sir
John Willoughby and his party (see ‘East Africa and its Big Game’) and
Dr. Abbott also met with it. “Like most bush-loving Antelopes,” Mr.
Jackson says, “it is fairly easy to stalk, but is a very tough beast,
and takes a good deal of killing, if not hit in the right place. Its
flesh, though much relished by the natives, is coarse and rank--indeed
that of an old bull is almost uneatable.” Mr. Gedge, who was at one
time Mr. Jackson’s companion in East Africa, writes to us that on one
occasion in Buddu, a province of Uganda, he fell in with, and shot, a
solitary buck of this species, of a light, almost fawn-colour, and adds
that their colour varies from a light brown to an almost dark slate in
different localities. He considers it one of the commonest Antelopes in
British East Africa. In Somaliland the Waterbuck was found on the Webbe
Shabeleh by Capt. Swayne and Col. Arthur Paget in the spring of 1894.
In his excellent volume on his Somali journeys Captain Swayne tells us
that he found it very plentiful all along the banks of the river as
far as he followed the stream. “They lie up in the dense forest which
clothes both banks along the water’s edge, and go out to feed in herds
on the open grass-flats outside the belts of forest.”
Whether the Waterbuck of the White Nile, referred by Gray and Heuglin
to _Cobus ellipsiprymnus_, is of this species or belongs to _C.
defassa_, is perhaps a little doubtful. We should be inclined to
think that the latter reference is more likely to be correct.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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