The book of antelopes, vol. 3 (of 4)Sclater, Philip Lutley
Science
The book of antelopes, vol. 3 (of 4)
Sclater, Philip Lutley
Antelopes
“In the larger herds (say from 40 to 150 or more) the sexes are
generally mixed, with a large preponderance of females. Some
large herds are all females. Small herds may be either mixed,
or all females, or all bucks. I do not call to mind having seen
more than 14 old bucks alone together. The solitaires are, as
a rule, old bucks, though you do not often see one quite alone
at any distance from a herd. I have seen Speke’s Gazelle on the
Toyoo Plain feeding in the same herd as the Aoul, and the latter
are frequently in the company of the Hartebeest. The ‘Aoul’ is,
in my opinion, identical with the Ariel, which is common in
Abyssinia and the neighbourhood of Suakin, but it appears to
diminish in size somewhat to the north.”
Of the typical form of this Antelope the British Museum possesses an
adult male specimen (mounted, but not exhibited), obtained by Esler in
the Bogos country, and purchased in 1873, also a female from Sennaar
received from the Stockholm Museum, in exchange, in 1846--probably one
of those collected by Hedenborg. It has likewise a young male from
Abyssinia procured by Rüppell, the original discoverer of the species,
and received in exchange from the Frankfort Museum; a skull of a
male obtained by Mr. W. Jesse during the Abyssinian Expedition; and
several heads and skins from Suakin collected and presented by Major W.
Sparkes, of the Welsh Regiment, now attached to the Egyptian army.
Of the southern subspecies, _Gazella soemmerringi berberana_, the
National Collection possesses a stuffed adult male specimen obtained
on the Shebeyli River, Somaliland, and presented by Col. Arthur Paget,
who has also given to the Museum two heads (male and female) from the
Bourdap Mountains in the same country. In the British Museum there
are likewise a mounted head and skins of both sexes of this Antelope
collected by Capt. Swayne in Somaliland and presented by Sclater.
The first living examples of Soemmerring’s Gazelle received by the
Zoological Society were purchased of a dealer in August 1867. The
announcement of their arrival, which appeared in the ‘Proceedings’ for
November 14th of that year, was accompanied by a beautiful lithographic
plate of the young pair drawn by Mr. Wolf. In 1871 a fine young male
example of this Antelope was presented by Mr. Charles McIver, Jun.,
with the information that the specimen had been obtained in the desert
on the Red Sea coast about 100 miles south of Suez. If this was
correct, the range of this Antelope would appear to extend considerably
further north than we know of upon any other authority. Other specimens
of this Antelope were obtained in 1877, 1879, 1892, and 1895, including
a fine pair from Suakin presented by Col. Holled Smith, C.B., in
July 1892. At the present moment, also, there is a fine male of this
Antelope in the Society’s Gardens, obtained by purchase in 1897.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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