The book of antelopes, vol. 3 (of 4)Sclater, Philip Lutley
Science
The book of antelopes, vol. 3 (of 4)
Sclater, Philip Lutley
Antelopes
Thomson, as we are informed by Dr. Günther, who described this Gazelle
as _Gazella thomsoni_ in June 1884 from two frontlets presented by
Thomson to the British Museum, met with it on his way up the country
from the plains near Kilimanjaro to Lake Baringo, at various elevations
under 6000 feet. Dr. Günther, we may remark, in his description and
figure of these horns fell into a not unnatural error in treating the
more slender pair (fig. 74_a_, p. 172) as those of a female. But,
as we have already stated, the horns are always abnormally small in the
doe of this Gazelle, and sometimes, it is said, altogether wanting. The
slenderer pair of horns shown in Dr. Günther’s figures, which we have
been kindly allowed to reproduce in this work, are, like the stouter
pair, doubtless those of a male.
In his volume ‘Through Masai-land,’ Thomson does not appear to have
made any reference to this Gazelle, except by repeating the figures
of the horns (p. 536) already published by Dr. Günther. Thomson had
intended, we believe, to put his notes on the animals and plants
collected and observed during this expedition into an Appendix, which,
however, from pressure of other matters, was never written.
After Thomson himself, the next earliest information obtained
concerning this Gazelle appears to be that collected by Sir John
Willoughby’s hunting-party in 1886–87. In the Appendix to ‘East-Africa
and its Big Game,’ Mr. Hunter writes of it as follows:--
“This Gazelle, discovered by Mr. J. Thomson during his trip
through Masai-land in 1883, was found in large numbers in the
plains in the Masai country to the south-west of Kilimanjaro,
and we also came across it on the borders of the Masai country
at the south end of Kyulu mountain, but it is not met with on
the south side of the mountain between these two points. I have
seen these Gazelles mixing with _Gazella granti_, the female of
which, at long range, though larger, is easily mistaken for a
male _G. thomsoni_, both having the broad black stripe on the
side. They are generally seen in small herds of one male to
about ten females.”
In the first volume of ‘Big Game Shooting,’ of the Badminton Library,
Mr. F. J. Jackson, than whom no one can be better qualified to speak
of East-African Antelopes, gives us his experiences with the present
species in the following words:--
[Illustration: Fig. 75.
Front view of head of Thomson’s Gazelle, ♀.
(Neumann’s ‘Elephant-Hunting,’ p. 11.)]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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