The book of antelopes, vol. 3 (of 4)Sclater, Philip Lutley
Science
The book of antelopes, vol. 3 (of 4)
Sclater, Philip Lutley
Antelopes
On several occasions during the many years in which Sclater’s excellent
correspondent Captain H. G. C. Swayne, R.E., was engaged on his
various explorations and expeditions in Somaliland, he wrote about a
“small red Antelope” found in the mountains which had the habits of
a “Klipspringer,” but, according to native testimony, was of quite
a different species. The existence of the same animal had also been
recorded as long ago as 1885 under the name “_Behra_,” by Herr
Josef Menges, in an account of his fourth journey in Somaliland,
published in Petermann’s ‘Mittheilungen.’ Herr Menges met with the
“_Behra_” on the Hekebo plateau (about 10° S. lat. and 44° 40´
E. long.), and had at one time a young living specimen of it in his
possession.
After Herr Menges the “_Behra_” or “_Beira_,” as it is now usually
called, after its Somali name, seems to have been first actually seen
by Lieut. E. J. Swayne, of the Indian Staff Corps, Capt. Swayne’s
brother, when he was in the Gadabursi country in the autumn of 1891.
He observed two of them among very rugged hills, but failed to get
a shot at them. He described them to Capt. Swayne as being “reddish
Antelopes, rather larger than the Klipspringer, with small straight
horns, which bounded away among the rocks in exactly the same manner as
the Klipspringer.”
Capt. Swayne was much excited about this discovery, and promised
Sclater to do all he could to procure specimens of the animal. On his
last trip to Somaliland he was assured by his Somalis that he would
find the “Beira” on Waggar Mountain, near the south-eastern extremity
of the Golis range, but he had not time to go there. On leaving
Berbera, however, Capt. Swayne exhorted his men to proceed to the
mountains themselves and to endeavour to procure some specimens of the
Beira, offering them a handsome reward for good heads and skulls of a
male and female, and leaving instructions to his agents there to pay
the men and to forward the specimens.
Early in 1894 the much-wished-for skins were obtained by the faithful
Somalis and forwarded to Sclater by Captain Swayne. We were proceeding
to describe and figure them in the Zoological Society’s ‘Proceedings,’
when we found that we had been anticipated by Herr Menges, who had
just described the species in the ‘Zoologischer Anzeiger,’ and given
it the name “_Oreotragus megalotis_.” It has, however, certainly
but a very remote connection, except as regards its habits, with the
Klipspringer (_Oreotragus_), and Dr. Noack was quite justified
in proposing for it the new and appropriate term _Dorcatragus_
(δορκας, an Antelope, and τραγος, a Goat), which he did in the same
periodical shortly afterwards. Dr. Noack based his article upon two
specimens, male and female, which he had then lately received from Herr
Menges for examination.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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