The book of antelopes, vol. 3 (of 4)Sclater, Philip Lutley
Science
The book of antelopes, vol. 3 (of 4)
Sclater, Philip Lutley
Antelopes
Although the Indian Gazelle, or “Ravine-Deer,” as it is usually termed
by Europeans, was doubtless known to the sportsmen of British India
long ago, it was not made known to science until 1831, when Col. Sykes,
one of the earliest pioneers in Indian natural history, described it
in a communication made to the Zoological Society of London. Sykes, in
his paper on the Mammals of the Deccan read before the Society in July
of that year, proposed to name it _Antilope bennetti_, after the
late Edward Turner Bennett, a well-known naturalist, who was at that
time Vice-Secretary of the Society. Sykes met with this Antelope on the
rocky hills of the Deccan “in groups rarely exceeding three or four
in number, and very frequently solitary.” In 1849, Fraser published
a figure of this species in his ‘Zoologia Typica,’ taken from one of
Sykes’s male specimens in the British Museum, which is still in the
National Collection, although not in the exhibition gallery. In 1844,
in his description of the mammals of Jacquemont’s ‘Voyage dans l’Inde,’
Isidore Geoffr. St. Hilaire described and figured an _Antilope
hazenna_, which he at that time considered to be different from
the present animal. But there can be no doubt that Jacquemont’s
specimens, which were obtained at Malwa in Central India, are the
same as _Gazella bennetti_, and Sykes’s term being the oldest
has been universally employed as the designation of this species. As
we shall presently show, _Gazella christii_ of Gray, from Sind,
and _Gazella fuscifrons_ of Blanford, from Baluchistan, are names
which have been based on what are merely slightly divergent forms of
_Gazella bennetti_.
From the researches of Elliot, Jerdon, Blyth, Blanford, and other
authorities on the mammals of British India, we are now well acquainted
with the range of this Gazelle in the peninsula and adjoining lands
to the west. Dr. Blanford describes it as extending throughout the
plains and low hills of North-western and Central India, and thence
through Baluchistan to the eastern shore of the Persian Gulf. In the
Indian peninsula, he continues, the Indian Gazelle ranges in suitable
localities throughout the Punjab, Sind, Rajputana, the N.W. Provinces,
and the whole of the Bombay Presidency with the exception of the
Western Ghats and Konkan; it also occurs in Central India as far east
as Palamow and Western Sargiya, and in the Central Provinces as far
east as Seoni and Chánda, together with the Hyderabad territories and
the Madras Presidency to a little south of the Kistna, Gazelles being
found at Anantapur, south of Kurnool, and in Northern Mysore.
For an account of the habits of the Indian Gazelle and the modes of its
chase, we cannot do better than refer to the last edition of General
Kinloch’s ‘Large Game Shooting,’ where they are described as follows:--
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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