The book of antelopes, vol. 2 (of 4)Sclater, Philip Lutley
Science
The book of antelopes, vol. 2 (of 4)
Sclater, Philip Lutley
Antelopes
To accompany this description a steel plate, drawn by Wolf and engraved
by Whymper (already alluded to in our account of the Poku), was given
at the same page of the work. It represents a scene on the Zouga with
males of the Lechee and Poku occupying a conspicuous position in the
foreground, and a mixed herd of these two Antelopes, which are said to
be frequently found together, on the reedy banks.
[Illustration: Fig. 36.
Head of _Cobus lechee_.
(From Mr. Selous’s mounted specimen in Brit. Mus.)]
Oswell sent home to his friend Capt. Vardon a specimen of the new-found
Antelope, and Capt. Vardon, as we find on reference to the minute-books
of the meetings of the Zoological Society of London, exhibited it
at the scientific meeting of that Society on June 11th, 1850. The
species thus became included in Gray’s “Synopsis of Antelopes and
Strepsiceres,” which was read on the same evening. A coloured plate by
Joseph Wolf, attached to the Synopsis, was taken from Capt. Vardon’s
specimen, which was subsequently presented to the British Museum.
The Lechee is also well figured by Wolf in a plate in Andersson’s
‘Lake Ngami,’ which contains an account of that traveller’s expedition
to the Lake from the west coast in 1854. After a description of the
animal Andersson says:--“The Leché is a Waterbuck, for though not
actually living in the water, it is never found any distance from it.
Great numbers are annually destroyed by the Bayeye, who convert their
hides into a kind of rug for sleeping on, carosses, and other wearing
apparel.”
The National Collection likewise contains a good mounted specimen of
the male of this Antelope obtained by Mr. F. C. Selous at Umparira,
on the Chobe, in 1881. In his paper on the Antelopes of Central South
Africa, published in the Zoological Society’s ‘Proceedings’ for 1881,
Mr. Selous gives us the following account of his experiences with
the Lechee:--“This Antelope is first met with in the marshes of the
Botletlie River, and is very numerous in the open grassy plains which
are always more or less inundated by the Tamalakan, Mababe, Machabe,
Sunta, and Chobe rivers. It is also common along the Upper Zambesi. In
the swamps of the Lukanga River, about 150 miles to the south-west of
Lake Bengweolo, which I visited in 1878, I found the Leegwee Antelope
in large herds.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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