The book of antelopes, vol. 3 (of 4)Sclater, Philip Lutley
Science
The book of antelopes, vol. 3 (of 4)
Sclater, Philip Lutley
Antelopes
“The whole colour of this Gazelle is very beautiful in its tints
of buff, purple, fawn, and grey and white; but what struck us
most was their ears and hoofs. The ears, besides being very
large and ornamental, are remarkable for the distinct rayed
marking on the inside. The hoofs are well worth a special
drawing, as they differ from those of any other Antelope with
which I am acquainted. They are very much hollowed out, as is
very noticeable in the track which they leave. The foot of the
stuffed specimen in the Natural History Museum is filled up with
some black substance which does not seem to me to be natural.”
The accompanying view of the head is enlarged from a photograph of this
Antelope kindly sent to us by Sir Edmund Loder.
[Illustration: Fig. 87.
Front view of the head of the Beira.]
During Mr. D. G. Elliot’s East-African expedition of 1896, Mr. Akeley,
one of his party, obtained two examples of this Antelope on Nasr
Hablod Mountain, near Hargeisa, in nearly the same district as that
just described by Sir Edmund Loder. These specimens are now in the
Field-Columbian Museum at Chicago.
The British Museum contains a mounted specimen of an adult male of the
Beira (from which our figure, Plate LXXV., has been prepared by Mr.
Smit) and a skin of a female of the same species purchased of Herr
Menges, besides the two skins obtained by the Somalis for Capt. Swayne,
as above mentioned, which have been presented to the Museum by Sclater.
It contains also a skin and complete skeleton of a female of this
Antelope presented by Capt. P. Z. Cox, as described above.
_September,_ 1898.
FOOTNOTES:
[1] This species, although mentioned last in Pallas’s List, may be
taken as the type of the genus, because the term “_Antilope_”
is clearly based on Ray’s and Buffon’s name for the Black-buck (The
Antelope; _l’Antilope_), quoted and identified by Pallas, and
only used up to this date for this particular species. The ordinary
justification for the same course, based on de Blainville’s revision
of 1816, is, as in so many other cases, invalidated by the earlier
work of Lichtenstein, by whom the Black-buck was placed among the
“_Gazellæ_,” and not among the “_Antilopæ genuinæ_.”
[2] _Saiga prisca_, Nehring, N. Jahrb. f. Min., Geol. u. Pal. ii.
p. 131 (1891).
[3] This species may be taken as the type of _Gazella_, as being
the only one which is common to Lichtenstein’s original genus and to
Blainville’s “_Gazella_” of 1816. The latter author is ordinarily
quoted as the original founder of the name, and his list includes the
best known species--_G. dorcas_. But Lichtenstein’s genus, two
years earlier in date, does not contain _G. dorcas_ at all, and
the only way in which the name _Gazella_ can be properly retained
for this group is by regarding _G. subgutturosa_ as its type.
[4] Przewalski’s ‘Mongolia,’ Morgan’s Translation, ii. pp. 208 _et
seqq._
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