The book of antelopes, vol. 3 (of 4)Sclater, Philip Lutley
Science
The book of antelopes, vol. 3 (of 4)
Sclater, Philip Lutley
Antelopes
This little Gazelle is a recent discovery of Surgeon Lieut.-Col. A. S.
G. Jayakar, C.M.Z.S., who has been for many years resident at Muscat
in the service of the British Indian Government. Surgeon Jayakar,
whose magnificent collections of Muscat fishes are known to all
ichthyologists, has during the past years collected and presented
to the National Museum several consignments of mammals from this
little-known country. Of these Thomas published an account in the
‘Proceedings’ of the Zoological Society for 1894, the most remarkable
of them being a new Wild Goat, from the Akhdar Range behind Muscat,
which was named _Hemitragus jayakari_ after its discoverer.
In 1897 the British Museum received from Surgeon Jayakar another
consignment of mammals collected at Muscat within the previous two
years. In this last series, besides the Oman specimens which were
referable to species already recorded in Thomas’s paper, there were
several skins and skulls of the present Gazelle, obtained from the Nejd
or Nedsched Desert in the interior of Arabia. Thomas established his
_Gazella marica_ upon these examples.
In a letter addressed to Thomas, Dr. Jayakar says that four of the
“Reem Gazelles” were from the Nejd Desert and one from Dahireh, the
north-western district of Oman. “It is probable,” he continues,
“that the species extends down to the desert behind Oman, as that
is continuous with the Nejd Desert.” Surgeon Jayakar subsequently
presented to the Museum a sixth (female) specimen from Aboor near Adam
in Oman.
The Marica Gazelle is clearly a close relative of the Persian Gazelle,
which it seems to represent in Arabia. But it is considerably smaller
in size, paler in colour, and is nearly free from face-markings,
besides having horns in the female sex. This last point is interesting,
as it shows how little importance, in a generic sense, should be
attributed to the presence or absence of horns in the female of an
Antelope; for it appears that this species, in which the horns are
present in the female, is unquestionably more nearly related to one
in which the horns are absent in the female than to the group of
_Gazella dorcas_, in which the horns are developed in both sexes.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Elsewhere in the archive
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account